Former Maine lawmaker (Chris O'Neil's daughter) with leukemia needs a bone marrow donor

Former Maine lawmaker with leukemia needs a bone marrow donor

by Billy Kobin

February 3, 2025

Former state Rep. Maggie O'Neil, D-Saco, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2024 and is seeking a bone marrow donor. Credit: Courtesy photo

Former state Rep. Maggie O’Neil was having a busy 2024, finishing her fourth and final term in the Legislature before shifting her focus to practicing civil rights and labor law.

Bad news forced her to slow down at the end of the year. O’Neil sought a walk-in medical appointment on Dec. 7 after feeling tired, thinking low iron was the cause. Instead, doctors diagnosed the 35-year-old with acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, a rare cancer that starts in the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow and is particularly uncommon in younger people.

She spent nearly 40 days at Maine Medical Center before heading home in mid-January, but she is now preparing for additional chemotherapy treatments and visits to Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute while hoping for a bone marrow donor who must be between ages 18 and 40.

A match could come from her younger brother or cousins or strangers, but plenty of support has already poured in from family, friends, colleagues and those who served with her when she was in the Maine House of Representatives between 2016 and 2024.

O’Neil’s father, Chris, who is also a former state representative, posted a photo of his daughter to Facebook last week and included a link to the national bone marrow donor registry. More than 1,100 people have since shared the post. Friends also started a “Maggie’s Journey” Facebook page and a GoFundMe that has raised nearly $40,000 to help with treatment costs.

“I’ve just been so grateful and really overwhelmed by how supportive everyone’s really been,’ O’Neil said in a phone interview Friday while at home with her mother.

O’Neil has had to avoid some of the things she enjoys as a self-described extrovert to protect her immune system, such as gardening and more time with friends. But family and friends have worn masks to visit, cheer her up and work on puzzles. An aunt sent her a lot of soup.

Chris O’Neil said his daughter is the first in the family to have leukemia. He said he hopes his Facebook post will spread awareness about the need that not only his daughter but also others have for bone marrow donors.

“It makes me want to cry to see how many people are connected to and concerned about my daughter,” Chris O’Neil said Friday.

Former and current lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have offered support for O’Neil, who was the youngest woman in the Legislature when first elected at age 27 in 2016 and who served on the agriculture, government oversight and environment committees.

Former Rep. Tom Skolfield, a Weld Republican who was O’Neil’s seatmate on the agriculture committee, shared her father’s Facebook post and wrote that she is “a wonderful and determined lady who can use help along with your thoughts and prayers.”

“Anyone who worked with Maggie in the Legislature knows she is a tenacious fighter,” Rep. Grayson Lookner, D-Portland, who sat next to O’Neil in the House, said in a text message Friday. “If anyone can win this fight, she can.”

O’Neil said the goal is for her to receive a donor and bone marrow transplant possibly within the next month or so, with plenty of treatment and travel to and from Boston in store for her this year. She said she has avoided searching for more about her condition and is taking it “one day at a time” while expressing gratitude for family, friends and the doctors who have treated her.

“I’m lucky enough to have been pretty healthy, so it was definitely a big surprise and shock,” O’Neil said of her diagnosis. “Everyone’s been so caring and supportive that it’s really helped me get through it.”

Billy Kobin

Billy Kobin is a politics reporter who joined the Bangor Daily News in 2023. He grew up in Wisconsin and previously worked at The Indianapolis Star and The Courier Journal (Louisville, Ky.) after graduating..

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/02/03/politics/state-politics/...

Former Maine lawmaker’s leukemia fight highlights national need for bone marrow donors

If Maggie O'Neil can't find a match among family members, she'll have to turn to a national nonprofit that connects volunteer donors with patients. But finding a matching donor is often a difficult and lengthy process.

February 4, 2025

Daniel Kool

Portland Press Herald

When she first stepped into urgent care in early December, Maggie O’Neil wondered whether her unaccounted-for bruises and fatigue were worth the wait for a clinician.

“I thought I had low iron or something,” O’Neil said in a phone call last week. But when the numbers came back “funny,” the former Democratic state representative for Saco was referred to Maine Medical Center.

“It just kind of was a whirlwind after that,” she said.

O’Neil was transferred to Maine Medical Center, where further tests showed that she has acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Often referred to as AML, it is the most common type of acute leukemia in adults, according to the National Cancer Institute.

She is awaiting test results to determine whether her brother, Max, 33, could provide the transplant. If he is a match, the transplant could happen as soon as mid-March, O’Neil said.

If not, O’Neil will need to turn to an anonymous donor through the nonprofit NMDP. Formerly known as the National Marrow Donor Program and Be The Match, the group matches volunteer donors and patients in need to facilitate bone marrow donations across states and countries.

“I haven’t googled anything about the disease, just because I didn’t want to see any kind of horror stories,” she said. “I’ve really just been taking it one day at a time and listening to what my doctors say, and not spending time spinning about other stuff.”

O’Neil stayed at the hospital for more than a month to undergo chemotherapy, which helped slow the cancer’s spread through her bloodstream but could not remove it from her marrow. So doctors recommended a bone marrow transplant.

“I’ll just do rounds of chemo until I’m able to get a transplant,” O’Neil said. “I’ll be taking the immune system of whoever donates. That’ll give me the building blocks.”

For O’Neil’s father, Christopher O’Neil, his daughter’s need was a window into the broader landscape of need. He considered signing up for the bone marrow registry but learned that he was too late: Only those 40 or younger can sign up. Those on the registry age out of it at 60, said Erica Sevilla, public relations manager for NMDP.

That restriction helps ensure only the most viable donors are considered, Sevilla said. Doctors request donors under the age of 34 in 75% of cases, she said.

In a post shared widely on Facebook, Christopher O’Neil urged community members to sign up for the marrow donor registry if they are young enough to do so and, if not, to encourage their younger loved ones to sign up.

“The interaction on the Facebook post confirmed that I wasn’t the only one in the dark about that (age cap),” he said on a Thursday phone call.

Hundreds of users shared and commented on the post, voicing their support for O’Neil and signaling that they had signed up for the registry. He said support seemed especially poignant among residents of Saco, which she represented in the state House of Representatives during her final term.

“I’ve had friends, colleagues and acquaintances dating back decades who came out of the woodwork to respond positively to that one rambling post,” Christopher O’Neil said. “I’ve said for decades that Maine is a big small town. … (This) proves me right.”

AML is a particularly aggressive form of leukemia, and it is most often referred for bone marrow transplants, said Sevilla.

“It is the No. 1 diagnosis that is treated by transplant,” Sevilla said.

Three times out of 10, a patient’s sibling is a suitable match, but most still end up turning to the registry, Sevilla said.

FINDING A MATCH IS DIFFICULT

Matching marrow is a complicated process, and it can take years for a potential donor to be tapped, if they are at all.

In 2023, the latest year for which data is available, more than 31,000 Mainers were registered with NMDP, a fraction of the roughly 9 million potential donors nationwide. From 2019-23, 65 of them went through with donations. During that same time frame, 327 Mainers searched for a viable donor.

The likelihood of finding a viable match from the registry largely depends on the patient’s ethnic background, according to NMDP.

Individuals of Caucasian descent have a roughly 79% chance of being paired with a fully matched donor. But that figure drops to 60% for Native Americans and to less than 50% for Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Latino and Black people — for which success rate drops to 29%, largely due to lack of donors, according to NMDP.

Human leukocyte antigens — the genetic markers used to determine a match — are inherited, meaning that donors and patients are likely to share the same ethnic background, but present-day geography makes little difference.

“At the end of the day, where a donor lives isn’t as important as where their grandparents or great-grandparents lived,” Sevilla said. “There’s definitely a disparity that exists among ethnically diverse patients.”

Recent developments in pre- and post-transplant treatments have improved outcomes for patients whose donors are not perfect matches, said Stephen Spellman, NMDP’s vice president of research and senior scientific director. That could help improve outcomes for patients in historically difficult-to-match groups.

“Where we’ve seen pretty tremendous growth in recent years is in the mismatched, unrelated donor setting,” Spellman said. “So patients that weren’t finding a match previously on the registry are able to find a suitable match and pursue curative therapy.”

YOUNG DONORS NEEDED

Still, Spellman noted that the registry needs a constant stream of young donors, as those already on it grow older and eventually age out. He said donors between 18 and 30 tend to offer the best outcomes.

“Now, does that mean that a donor over the age of 30 is always a deal-breaker? No,” Spellman said. “There’s just some additional risk that’s taken.”

O’Neil said she was “totally shocked and floored” by the outpouring of support from friends and constituents, as well as more than $40,000 that was donated to a GoFundMe to help cover the costs associated with a monthlong stay at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and routine trips to Boston following the transplant.

“Just feeling supported and loved is really helping make it easier,” she said. She said the staff on Maine Med’s oncology floor have been supportive and encouraging.

O’Neil said she’s seen firsthand how important a reliable donor registry is, for any kind of transplant.

“Whatever people are willing and able to do, I’ve just seen the impact from myself and people in here,” O’Neil said from the oncology wing.

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/former-state-reps-leukemia-h...

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