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.”
