By Clark Judge
(October 2, 2024) — If you plan on attending the Town Picnic at Deer Lake on Saturday, October 5, 2024, here’s a suggestion: Look for Karen Newton. She’s 22, 5-feet-8, with auburn hair, a broad smile and an important message. And if you miss her? No problem. Look for her parents. She’s expected to join them at one of the information tables, with advice that could help save someone’s life.
In fact, it just did.
You see, Karen Newton recently participated in a program called NMDP (formerly Be The Match), a non-profit that explores saving lives through marrow donation. She knew nothing about it until signing a stem-cell donor registry a year ago as a junior at Middlebury College. Now a graduate and living in Madison, the former Daniel Hand High School student knows virtually everything about the program and is willing … no, eager … to share that knowledge with anyone interested in her story.
I was. So I asked.
Karen “KK” Newton is well known at Middlebury, though not for anything associated with NMDP. She was the goalie on the Panthers field hockey team, and she was a good one. Correction: She was a great one, starring for a squad that won three consecutive NCAA Division III championships and was 65-1 from 2021-23. Not only did Karen set two Middlebury records in her career there, but she’s one of only three goalies … ever … not to allow a single score in the NCAA tournament.
I mention that because it was field hockey that first put her in touch with NMDP. In 2022, Middlebury’s football team challenged the field hockey women to see which one of them could place the most donors on a registry, and while Newton didn’t respond then, she did a year later at the urging of teammates.
“We had representatives from NMDP come and talk to us about the process and what it can do for other people,” she said. “When I heard that all that it takes is a cheek swab, and you could save someone’s life, I thought: What the heck, why not?”
So in April, 2022, she filled out a form, had her cheek swabbed and walked away, presumably not to hear from NMDP in the foreseeable future …. if at all.
However, one year later … to the month … she did. Informed that she might be a match for an unidentified adult female in need of a peripheral blood stem cell donor, she wasn’t sure what to think … or do. The odds of getting selected are long, with NMDP estimating that one in 430 members on its registry go on to donate. Plus, Karen has an aunt who signed a donor registry 10-15 years ago and hasn’t been contacted.
But subsequent tests identified Karen as a perfect match, which meant — if willing – she’d fly to Grand Rapids, Michigan to undergo a lengthy procedure called apheresis, where blood is removed through a needle in one arm. She never wavered. The only question was: Which of her parents would accompany her? With only one allowed, she chose her Dad, even though she admitted she’s closer to her mother.
“I knew she’d be stressing out the whole time,” she confessed, “and he was going to go more with the flow.”
The two embarked on a whirlwind journey that began with five daily injections of filgrastim, a protein that causes bone marrow to increase the production of stem cells … which is another story. It seems Karen has a fear of needles. Nevertheless, her father was able to administer the first four rounds (“It’s basically the same type of injection a diabetic would give himself,” he said) before the two flew on June 30 to Grand Rapids.
There, a fifth and final series of injections were completed before Karen underwent a four-and-a-half hour procedure, with her father at her side. Afterward, they returned to their hotel where Karen slept for an hour before the two went out to dinner.
The next day they flew home.
“In the few days following,” she said, “I heard that the transplant was successful. Then I heard the patient was doing well.”
Asked how that made her feel, Karen beamed.
“You seldom have an opportunity to do something of this magnitude for somebody else,” she said, “especially for somebody you don’t even know and never met. I knew nothing about her. So, when you’re not face-to-face with the person you’re saving, you think about it as a new experience and something you’re just doing.
“But then you think about it and realize there’s a person out there who’s alive because of you and has your genetic markers. I do feel kinda proud of myself. I overcame my fear of needles.”
With that, she and her father laughed. Together, they shared an experience neither will forget.
“This brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it,” Dave Newton said. “She could’ve backed out at any time, but she didn’t. This was a selfless act that makes my wife and me so proud.”
That story will be repeated again and again when all three – Karen, her father and her mother, Diane – staff the NMDP table at Deer Lake this weekend, the first time the donor program returns there since 2017 when then-camp director Patty Clifton invited the group – then Be The Match – to appear for a mid-week Parents Night.
Talk about appropriate. Karen and her two brothers were Deer Lake campers. The three were camp counselors, too. Their mother was a camp nurse and, later, a staff assistant. And now Karen and her parents return there as spokespersons for a program that can … and did … make a difference.
“This is an amazing opportunity to do something that’s bigger than yourself,” said Karen. “Just being on a registry is important because it means it’s one more person who could be a match.”
Karen Newton didn’t know that once. She does now. So do her parents. Make sure to find them at the Town Picnic. Their advice could change your life … and that of others.
“If there’s a message,” said Dave Newton, “it’s that there’s no reason to be afraid. Because the benefits for somebody … and for you … far outweigh those fears.”
For more information on NMDP please log on to: https://www.nmdp.org/
Photo of Dave Newton and Karen Newton by Clark Judge
Photo of Karen Newton with Operating Room Nurses by Dave Newton
