Looking for a saving match
Groton — Maria Tompkins started feeling lightheaded last summer while working out at the gym.
Pretty soon, the 20-year-old University of Connecticut senior couldn't move without losing her breath.
"That's when I knew," she said.
By Sailfest weekend, she was holed up at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, watching the fireworks from afar. The diagnosis: leukemia.
It was the same diagnosis her mother, Deborah, had received 17 years earlier, and her step-sister Alyssa Gaetani got the same news when she was in sixth-grade.
Tompkins' mom died when she was only 4, but her step-sister is doing well and Tompkins hopes medical advances made over the years will improve her chances.
"Some days I wake up and feel fine; some days, not so fine," she said.
Doctors have told Tompkins, who temporarily has withdrawn from classes at UConn, that her best chance for long-term term survival is a bone marrow transplant within the next month.
She said medical personnel test for 10 factors to determine a perfect match, but so far the best options in the registry of donors match only nine of the factors.
"It's very rare to find a perfect match that's not related to you," Maria said. "We're still looking for the 10."
And none of Tompkins' relatives, including her father and sister, has been a perfect match.
"The better the match, the better the outcome," said her father, Dan Tompkins, a city firefighter.
Maria Tompkins' friends and family have launched a campaign to get more people into the national bone marrow registry.
Donors must be between the ages of 18 and 44 to be eligible, and can get tested by going online to www.bethematch.org, which will send a kit through the mail.
Last month, about 400 students from UConn submitted to a cheek swab.
The Groton Fall Festival will hold a similar event from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday at Poquonnock Plains Park, and Sneekers Cafe will offer testing from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, while also holding a fundraiser.
"We're hoping to bring a lot of good, positive energy," said Jen Tuohy of Groton, who is helping coordinate the Sneekers event.
Friends and acquaintances say Tompkins always has been kind to people in the community, and now it is time for them to return the favor.
"She's a delight," said Jim Kamerica, chair of the Groton Town Parks and Recreation Commission, which is sponsoring the fall festival. "She's always been good to kids."
Tompkins has received both in-patient and out-patient treatment at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She also has had some chemotherapy treatments.
Tompkins said about one in 250 people tested will be a close enough match to be brought in for preliminary screening.
In the event the match leads to a transplant, a volunteer would be asked to go through a surgical procedure under anaesthesia that involves using a needle to draw liquid marrow from the back of the pelvic bone.
A double major in molecular and cell biology and environmental health, Tompkins understands much of the lingo of her condition.
She knows, for instance, that leukemia is not like breast cancer in which a specific gene is predisposed to becoming cancerous.
"It's not one set that she passed down to me," she said. "It's an incredible coincidence."
l.howard@theday.com
Twitter: @KingstonLeeHow
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