Community Corner

Helping Tommie Lukowski With Laughter

Laughter Saves Lives will hold "A Night for Tommie" Thursday. The fundraiser will help Tommie Lukowski raise money to cover his rising medical bills.

It was in 2007 that everything changed for Tommie Lukowski. He was a senior at East Brunswick High School. He was looking forward to graduation, and to what came next.

But things took a tragic turn that year when his father died and, just months later, his own health took a turn for the worse. He was diagnosed with osteosarcoma—a rare form of bone cancer—in his right elbow. Now a member of East Brunswick Fire District 1, Lukowski’s troubles were only just beginning. After going through chemotherapy and receiving a prosthetic elbow, Lukowski was later diagnosed with leukemia in April 2009.

“What they did was take the midsection of my upper arm and they cut down all the way to the midsection lower forearm and put in a prosthetic,” said Lukowski. “It took about two and a half months just for the recovery from that and I was doing chemotherapy at the same time.”

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On Thursday, April 5, the Laughter Saves Lives charity will hold “A Night for Tommie,”  at the to help hiim handle the never ending and always rising medical bills. The night of comedy will feature Adam Ferrara from TV’s “Rescue Me,” Steve Alevea and j Jay Boyd and is hosted by retired New York fire fighter John Larocchia.

“There are 1,000 seats there, if we can sell it out we can hand him a check for like, $40,000,” organizer Butch Seltzer told the East Brunswick Patch several weeks ago.

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Lukowsi said anything will help.

“I’m not able tor work because one of the biggest things is I work at a doctor’s office, and people come in because they’re sick. My doctors don’t want me going there because of the infection and germs,” he said. “I’m not even really allowed in public because the slightest germs can give me a big infection.”

In addition to being a member of East Brunswick Fire District 1, Lukowski is studying to become a seep technician, to help those with sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.

It wasn’t just chemo, Lukowski has had to undergo. He also received a stem cell transplant at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. Fortunately, Lukowski’s cancers were in remission, but with a prosthetic elbow, he’s also having a other medical problems.

“Right now I’m in remission with that, but what’s going on is the prosthetic broke again and we’ve been going back and forth between doctors because I was supposed to put the new prosthetic in, but as soon as I got there I got an infection,” said Lukowski.  “I got an infection and six weeks of antibiotics, then they wanted me off for six weeks, then after I was off for six weeks they were going to go and do the prosthetic, but then they realized blood strength in the arm wasn’t strong.”

Eventually doctors performed a procedure in which they took skin from his stomach and sewed it to his elbow, but after five weeks of that his forearm became infected.

All of which leads up to today, with Lukowski sitting at home unable to return to his job in an area doctor’s office fore fear of infection, and awaiting June, when he hopes to finally get his elbow replaced and of course, more bills than he can handle.

“It’s always in the back of my mind, but for the most part I go from one thing to the next to see what’s going to happen,” said Lukowski about his struggles. “But it does cross my mind. and I try not to let it, but it does at times.”

Tickets for A Night For Tommie are $50 for general admission and $60 for loge seating.

For more information on the Laugher Saves Lives event, visit their website, Laughtersaveslives.org.


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