Tyrone turns out for Tracy

HUNDREDS of potential donors from Tyrone and beyond came to Fintona at the weekend in the hope of finding a stem cell match for a beloved teacher at a local school who is bravely battling cancer.

In a heartfelt effort to support Tracy McKenna, Denamona Primary School in Fintona organised the crucial event to find a stem cell donor.

Tracy was diagnosed with leukaemia last May, and, despite undergoing intensive chemotherapy, the cancer returned in January.

Now, the mother-of-two urgently requires a stem cell transplant, prompting the school to rally the local community to aid her at this critical time.

On Saturday, Denamona Primary School became a centre for swabbing for the day.

Donors queued by the dozens to take a swab of their mouths in order to gather stem cells to be added on a global register, of which may be a potential match for Tracy or another person leukaemia around the world.

Speaking at the event, Tracy’s sister, Wendy Kerr, praised the ‘overwhelming’ support from the community.

“You don’t realise how important these swabs are until you’re in a situation where you need it,” Wendy said. “We didn’t know anything about leukaemia or blood cancers until we were thrown right in the middle of this nightmare.

“Today means everything, Tracy urgently needs a donor.

“Sadly none of our family are a match and neither is anyone on the DKMS register, so they are doing a global search now.”

Wendy continued, “We are overwhelmed by our community coming out and helping us, there’s been people here from quarter to eight and we had to open up a second swab room.

“The DKMS first came here suggesting we go to Omagh, but we told them we wanted to do it in Tracy’s own wee local area and raise our own wee community spirit – and the turnout has been unreal.

“There’s so many people who desperately need a match on different registers so today is to raise awareness – which is Tracy’s aim; to find a match for her and for other people suffering from leukaemia.

“We just want to thank everyone for coming out to help and hopefully now we can find a match,” Wendy added.

Principal, Janet Burke, who worked alongside the Fintona woman until her diagnosis, said, “Everybody misses Tracy, she’s so gentle and fun, all the children love and miss her, they ask about her all the time and we all pray together every single day.

“Tracy was with us in school right up until the day she was diagnosed because she was so dedicated, so we want to try do everything we can to help her and to show our love and support and help other people like her.”

Mrs Burke added, “Our community is just amazing, they have came out in numbers we couldn’t have expected and we all appreciate their selflessness to do so. Some people have even come from farther afield, one family that came early in the morning travelled from Magherafelt, with many others from the likes of Fermanagh.”

The swabbing centre was hosted by Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei (DKMS), an international non-profit bone marrow donor charity who provide swabbing kits across the world and add the stem cells to a register to find matches for people in Tracy’s situation.

Sophia, from the charity, added, “We came here today to hopefully find a stem cell match for Tracy, but also to get people registered who may be potential matches for other people across the world.

“Every 20 minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and some people need an unrelated stem cell match, so we’re trying to narrow down the search by having potential donors register.

“Today has been a massive turnout and it just shows how great the support from the community is here trying to help Tracy and her family.”