March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Jessie’s coming home; match found for Scott

What doubly wonderful news we bring you. Jessie Snyder is due home today, and a donor match has been found for Scott Hogan.

Jessie, the 10-year-old bone marrow transplant recipient from Old Town, is expected to fly into Bangor at 2:01 p.m. today on Delta Flight 3312.

Her stepfather, Greg Marquis, was notified around midday Wednesday that his wife and daughter could come home. Jessie received her bone marrow transplant in early August. She was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 at age 3. After two years of treatment, the disease returned in ’91 at which time she underwent two more years of treatment. The cancer reappeared last April, leading to the bone marrow transplant.

The only minor hitch in the planned return flight Thursday that her family encountered apparently resulted from the doctors’ immediate decision to release Jessie from Children’s Hospital-Milwaukee in Wisconsin, and her family’s wish to get her here as soon as possible.

As it turns out, Greg Marquis explained, the donated Delta Frequent Flyer miles program established for Project Jessie through United Way of America is not set up to kick into action on such short notice, so Greg had to go out and get the tickets himself.

“But that’s OKy,” he said. “We had a social worker helping with United Way, but United Way needs five days or so to get the board approval and all.

“I just didn’t want to leave Jessie out there one day longer. She wants to get home. We’ll just use those Frequent Flyer tickets when she has to go back for checkups. It will all work out fine.”

After a nationwide bone marrow donor search, which included testing 567 people right here in eastern Maine, a match has been found for 28-year-old father of two Scott Hogan of Waterford, Conn.

The Boston University and Hampden Academy graduate, who was an officer aboard the U.S. Navy’s Trident submarine USS Maine, was diagnosed with acute leukemia this summer.

“He flies to Seattle on Wednesday, Nov. 20, to undergo two to three weeks of testing for the procedure which is expected to take place in mid-December,” said his father, Dick Hogan of Bangor.

“They were here for three days. We had an early Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family. They just left for home this morning [Wednesday] to prepare for the trip.”

Hogan family friends and Hogan’s State Farm Insurance associates organized the local donor drive that resulted in more than 500 people being placed in the national donor registry. The hope was that a local donor would emerge but, instead “all we know is that a 38-year-old woman is a 6-of-6 match,” Hogan said.

That match is considered as near perfect as possible since one intricate part of the chemistry isn’t quite on target. “But doctors consider that a better chance for Scott than a 5-of-6 match from one of his children,” his father said. “They don’t think they’ll get anything closer.”

Hogan does not believe the match came from donor-testing here. “I think we would know if someone from here was going to Boston for [that part] of the procedure,” he said.

Scott’s family will go with him to Seattle. That includes his wife, Ronda, the daughter of Dick and Jane Winship of Orrington, and the young couple’s children, 4-year-old Scottie and 2-year-old Megan.

“They will get an apartment three miles from the hospital. Scott will probably be one month in complete isolation, and probably another three months in-and-out every day,” Dick Hogan said. “But I think having been on a submarine will help him cope with the isolation.”

Scott has come through three rounds of chemotherapy quite well, despite spiking a three-day fever of 105 degrees and having some infections, his father said. “He came out whole at the other end. His blood pressure is good and he has no lung problems. The doctors were pleased. The rest of his body is healthy, and that sub background will sure help with the isolation.”

The 10th annual PICA Auction, sponsored by Peace Through InterAmerican Community Action, begins at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at St. John’s Catholic Church on York Street in Bangor.

Auction organizer Jackie Bryan of Bangor reports that more than 200 businesses and individuals have donated art, crafts, clothing and other items for the benefit.

Included in that number is a one-year subscription to the Bangor Daily News, artwork by Michael Lewis of the University of Maine art department, “who is considered a pioneer of turpentine washes,” Bryan said.

“We also have work by Robert Shetterly, who does a lot of pen-and-ink and drypoint. Some of the written work includes a donation by Sandy Phippin, and Jeannie Mooney has donated jewelry and hand-painted cloth bookmarks.”

Part of the proceeds from the auction will go to the Bangor Clean Clothes Campaign, a local PICA effort to educate retailers and consumers that clothes sold in Bangor should not be produced under sweatshop conditions.

Byron said some funds will be used for PICA’s other project, the Bangor-Carasque, El Salvador, Sister-City Committee. To receive information on the auction or the organization, or to make a donation to PICA, call 947-4203.

In our recent article about holiday greeting cards to benefit the Eastern Maine AIDS Network, we had the incorrect telephone number. The number to call is 990-3626.

The Standpipe, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.


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