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2023 Tour Honorees for Temple-Belton Dinner
Altrusa International of Temple, TX, Inc will host a dinner for the Lone Star Team when they arrive in Temple. Several members of the club has had their lives touched by donation and will share their stories at the dinner. The team members from Temple-Belton will also share their stories of donation and why they are part of the 2023 Lone Star Team.
Sherry Woodard – Blood Donor
“I started donating while attending the University of Texas in Austin about thirty five years ago. There was a blood drive going on so my boyfriend, now husband and roommate all went. That was when I found out I had a semi-rare blood type and began donating whenever I could, especially when I was contacted directly.
The reason I continue to donate is because my husband, who has been ICU, trauma and flight nurse along with a volunteer at our local fire/EMS department, has shown me the urgency of patients who need blood. If it was a family member, friend or neighbor that is in that situation, I would want to help them in whatever way I can. I also found out, not long ago, that my plasma can be used for babies. Who can resist helping babies?!?
I usually give blood at least four or five times a year. I tend to get anemic at times, so am not always able to give. As of my last donation, Baylor Scott & White says I have donated over 52 times.
I wish more people understood how donating blood saves lives. I try to recruit others to go with me whenever I can. If nothing else, hopefully they notice the cool t-shirts I get.”
Sherry has been a member of the Altrusa International of Temple for 12 years.
Monika Rodriguez – Organ donor
Phyllis Renfrow, Executive Director of “Amy’s House”, shared the special donation story about her 13-year-old granddaughter, Monika, who their family lost in a car accident in 2013.
“Monika was a wonderful girl who loved working with children and never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. Although she was a little shy, she was a cheerleader for her five brothers. Monika loved school, was an accomplished poet, and was kind of an “old soul” because her wisdom and intellect were beyond her 13 years.
Over the July 4th weekend in 2013, Monika and her family were stopped in traffic, just thirty minutes from home, when a distracted driver ran up on their vehicle. Monika was critically injured. Two paramedics in a car in front of Monika’s car ran back to perform CPR until she could be transported to the hospital. At the hospital, Monika was placed on life-support and later passed away.
Just weeks prior to the accident, Monika’s mom received her new license. Monika saw that she was a donor and asked what it meant. Her Mom said it means “if you die, other people might benefit from your organs.” Monika told her mom she wanted to do that someday. Just a few weeks later, Monika was an organ donor.
She donated everything possible except her lungs, which were too damaged from the accident. Phyllis said they have heard from all the recipients, and she is travelling this week to Hawaii to meet the recipient of Monika’s heart.
Allison Medrano – Stem Cell Donor
To tell my story, I have to go back about 23 years to the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. That was the year my dad had undergone a routine procedure and within a few months found out he had inherited Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), and we all went on the renal diet.
In 2000, I was asked to come out and take a picture of dad with his bike. He needed a picture of himself to attach to an application for the Lone Star Circle of Life Bike Tour. Little did we know how much that picture, and application, would change the whole trajectory of our lives. Dad was accepted as a rider in the 2000 LSCOL, and at one of the local events, I donated a pint of blood (nothing unusual) and asked them to go ahead and put me on the National Marrow Registry while I was in the process. During that time, all they needed was an extra vial of blood, and they would type it, and add you to the list. Simple, easy, and what was one more vial? Within the next five years of that donation, we would celebrate weddings, and birthdays, and we would endure dialysis.
In January 2007, my dad received a kidney, from part of the LSCOL family (I’ll leave that part of the story to him, because his donor almost didn’t make the cut). After the transplant, we promoted the need for organ donation, attended the Transplant Games of America, dad got to hold his first grandchild, and life resumed as normal. Fast forward another 5 years, to May, 2010. I’m teaching special education at Travis Middle School and received an email from the Be the Match Registry informing me that I have been typed as a potential match for someone in need. Elated doesn’t even match the feelings in reading that email. My first call was to my dad, second my husband, and then to Debbie Mabry. I was very concerned because I was headed out of state for a training and was afraid they wouldn’t be able to get in touch with me, should I move up further in the testing. At the time, I had no idea how many other people had received that same email. But I was hopeful and did lots of praying that I was THE one…I needed to be. I was scheduled to leave for Kentucky, and the day before I was slated to leave, I received the phone call that I had matched, and my recipient’s doctor was requesting Peripheral Blood Stem Cells (PBSC), and that the donation would happen in August.
The next two months were filled with an anxious excitement that I can’t put into words. I continued to have my blood drawn, tested, and I was checked over from head to toe to make sure I was healthy enough to give life to someone who desperately needed another shot at one. My recipient got sick just before the transplant was scheduled, so it was put off almost an entire month in the hopes that she would recover until she was well enough to undergo the transplant. In September of 2010, my dad and I traveled to Baylor Medical Center to prepare for the harvest of my stem cells. We checked in to the hospital on the morning of September 1, hooked up to the apheresis machine, and the process began. After 4-5 hours, I was done. The stem cells were counted, and there was a knock on the hotel room door. When I opened the door, Debbie stood there with a big grin on her face letting me know I had overproduced, and she was headed to the transplant center. My recipient received my stem cells on September 2, 2010.
In the US, you have to wait one full year before you can make actual contact with your recipient, or with your donor. I got a phone call from Debbie asking me if I would be willing to meet my recipient, because she desperately wanted to talk to me. I’ll admit, I never had any intentions of meeting my recipient. I can’t explain why, but I guess I didn’t want to know I had failed, in the event something happened. But, I agreed, and then I didn’t hear anything. I thought they had changed their minds, until the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, 2011. I picked up the phone, answering a number from Maine that I didn’t recognize, and was immediately met with “Hi Allison, this is Cindy, your recipient. I’m sorry we haven’t called until today, but Thanksgiving means a little more to us this year because of you, and we wanted to call today.” HOW do you respond to that?!? I’ll tell you…you cry. Because there aren’t any words to follow that up. Every year, since 2011, Cindy and Tony call on Thanksgiving, and on our anniversary. And now they have a smart phone and we can actually text!
In October of 2015, Cindy and Tony, her husband, came to Texas, and we got to meet at the Kick-off event for the LSCOL. It was the first time we had seen each other in person, and their first trip to Texas. It was one of the best weeks of my life. There are not adequate words to be used for the feelings and emotions that a meeting or reunion of that nature can bring up. Cindy continues to do well. She has since retired, and she and Tony are enjoying their life together.
It’s an ongoing joke in our family that I’m always cold because I don’t have any blood, to which my response is, “Actually, I do…and it cures cancer.”
Amy Henderson Firth – Organ Donor
Amy Henderson Firth died suddenly in November of 2012. Because Amy had chosen to be a donor, she lives on in the lives of at least 70 other people.
Amy was intelligent, loving, and generous. Always an honor student, Amy was also a varsity cheerleader at Copperas Cove High School. She received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas San Antonio and a master’s degree from Baylor University in Waco. After graduation she worked in public schools and private companies as a speech therapist. She had a heart for children and worked hard to help her young patients, many of whom suffered from autism. She and her husband, Michael, have a son and a daughter whom she loved dearly. Amy supported her children’s endeavors in baseball and gymnastics as well as encouraging them to be great students in School
After Amy’s death, her parents, John and Margaret Henderson, became very involved with TRIO – Transplant Recipients International Organization, and worked tirelessly through TRIO to make the dream of “Amy’s House” a reality. Amy’s House is a hospitality house for Central Texas transplant patients and their caregivers during their transplant journey at Baylor Scott & White in Temple.
During this year to date, Amy’s House has had 219 families who stayed varying lengths of time totaling 1057 nights. Of those families 75 were new to the facility.
Toby Fettig – Heart Transplant Recipient
Seventeen years ago, I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I was told that at some point I would likely need a heart transplant, but no time frame was given. I was prescribed medications and set up with regular cardiologist visits. After the initial shock and fear that comes with a diagnosis like this, I returned to my regular life and habits, both good and bad. The medications seemed to work well and for the most part I felt good and strong.
Over the next 15 years I lived in a sort of denial that I would need a transplant. Three years ago, my cardiologist scheduled me for a test and depending on the results he wanted to start the evaluation process and get me on the waiting list for a heart transplant. I expected to go in for a test and return home the same day. The test showed that my heart function was very low, and I was admitted to the hospital for the full battery of transplant evaluation tests. Over a week later I was sent home, again very scared. I was told I needed a transplant, but I could not be listed because my weight was too high for me to qualify. I changed my diet and started exercising in earnest and lost 35 pounds over the next seven months. Denial set in again, as I began to feel better, and I thought I could work my way out of the need for a transplant. On Mother’s Day 2022 I walked a 5K. Six days later I collapsed due to cardiac arrest.
An implanted defibrillator shocked me back to consciousness where I found myself on hand and knees in the parking lot of my wife’s work, staring at a pool of my own blood. It seems I had broken my fall with nothing but my face and in turn had broken a tooth and split my lip. These were least of my worries. Against my foolish protests my wife took me straight to the ER. I was admitted and over the course of a few days I had an Impella heart pump implanted to assist my heart and keep me alive while I waited to be placed on the transplant list and subsequently to wait until a suitable donor heart could be located. I was told by my transplant team that there was only one road home for me at this point and that was through a heart transplant. With the heart pump installed I was not allowed to move about unassisted. I was, however, allowed to walk as much as possible with the aid of a nurse to help manage all the cords, tubes and wires that attached me to the pump’s monitor which had to be dragged along for my walks. Over the next several weeks my family and my nurses logged many miles on that hospital floor, and I am grateful to have been physically able to do so. Six weeks after I was admitted to the hospital, I received the Gift of my donor heart. Eleven days later I was released from the hospital. Two months later I was working part-time. As of this writing I am 13 months post-transplant and have had no setbacks to speak of. I’m very blessed.
The real story is about the people that came together to save my life. These are my heroes. They are the ones that deserve to be honored. I am so grateful for my donor and their family. I know virtually nothing about them or the circumstances of their passing. All I know is that at some point they made a very generous decision to help others during what must have been a very painful time. How do you thank someone for a gift like this? No words that I could write or say would be adequate to convey the sense of gratitude I have for these people.
I’ve been told that when writing or talking about things like this we should be careful about mentioning God, some might be offended. I can appreciate that thought. Many of us have different beliefs when it comes to religion. However, I can’t tell this story without referring to God. I spent six weeks in a hospital waiting for a heart, God and I had plenty of time to talk. I could never bring myself to ask God to bring me a heart. I couldn’t pray for something bad to happen to someone so I could get better. So, I asked God to give me the faith and the strength to face whatever He put in my path, good or bad. I asked God that if I were to receive a donor heart that He give peace to that family and I asked God’s blessings on everyone who was praying for me, many of whom I had never met.
The nurses who cared for me during my hospitalization were the best. Skilled and competent professionals, they encouraged and educated me throughout this whole experience. Their kindness and encouragement, every step of the way, are what we will remember the most. They will say they were just doing their jobs; we will always consider them our friends and our heroes.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to honor my wife, Wendy. Caregivers are the most important and often the most overlooked members of a transplant team. She loved me and encouraged me every step of the way. She was my chief advocate with the medical staff. She maintained the day to day running of our household and handling all the finances that were obviously strained because I was not working. She held down her own job throughout. She may not have gone through all the physical trials of a heart transplant, but she certainly went endured all the mental strain that comes with one, perhaps more. She bore the brunt of my ill-tempered nastiness that the medications tend to induce in post-transplant patients. Wendy and my three kids were my biggest cheerleaders and my prime motivation to get up every day and work hard towards getting better.
As a heart transplant recipient these are the people I honor.