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Franklin family on quest to find lifesaver

By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
GHS

Aug 21, 2007 - Franklin - All it takes is one match.

When Franklin residents Bob and Cecilia Mancini hold a bone marrow registration drive Saturday with the help of medical staff, they will seek new donors willing to supply blood-forming cells to patients with certain life-threatening diseases.

Among the potential recipients is Bob Mancini's brother-in-law, Angelo Terrazzino, a 52-year-old Needham mechanic who has leukemia and has not been able to find a suitable donor among the millions registered after his first match declined to participate.

"If we don't cough up something here, maybe someone does somewhere else," Bob Mancini said this week at his Country Way home. "You still have to hope for it."

After appearing out-of-sorts at the Mancini's July 4 party last year, Terrazzino was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, the most common form of the disease and a fast-growing cancer that attacks the blood and bone marrow. With chemotherapy failing to send Terrazzino's leukemia into remission for more than a few months, his doctors decided he needed a transplant of healthy blood-forming cells provided by a donor.

"It's amazing that he's hanging in there," Bob Mancini said. "It's such a painful thing."

When attempting bone marrow transplants, doctors compare certain proteins, or markers, on the cells of the patient and the donor that tell the body which cells belong and which don't. A close match means the recipient's body is less likely to reject the new cells. The protein types are varied and inherited, meaning immediate family members are most likely to prove a match, followed by donors of the same racial or ethnic background.

Doctors did not find a match among Terrazzino's family, but did discover a suitable German donor through an international registry, even though Terrazzino is Sicilian. The donor eventually pulled out of the process, however, and a second match has not been found among the 11 million people who are in the global database.

"It was so disappointing," Cecilia Mancini said of the German man's decision, adding she did not know the reasons for it.

Having been sent back to square one, the Mancinis are organizing a donor registration drive called Angels for Angelo, to be held with the help of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in back of the Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School.

Participants should be between the ages of 18 and 60 and willing to go through the transplant process, though in the short term they will simply have their cheek swabbed and be entered into the National Marrow Donor Program. The test costs $52 but is usually covered by insurance, according to Dana-Farber's Web site.

By holding a donor drive in Franklin, the Mancinis said they are hoping to tap into the town's large Italian community, which is the next best ethnicity after Sicilian for their purposes. While he has been released from the hospital for now, Terrazzino, a father of four, is homebound. He hopes to be around for the birth of a grandchild in January, the Mancinis said.

"It is what it is," Bob Mancini said of his brother-in-law's condition and the need for a donor. "We're going to try to do what we can to bring a match together. This is his ticket."

While his wife is Irish, Bob Mancini is Italian. Both will be giving their first samples for the donor program at their registration drive, and don't know if they will beat the odds by proving a match for Terrazzino or others in need.

"I'd do it in a heartbeat for my brother-in-law," Bob Mancini said. "But I'd do it for someone else, too."

Michael Morton can be reached at [email protected] or 508-634-7582

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