by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Gregory Hooper’s calling card is a little different from most.
It’s not the photo of a gold pocket watch on a chain that runs up the side of the card. In the present context, it’s a reminder that time can’t be tamed.
The difference is in the purpose for the card. Gregory Hooper isn’t selling anything, representing any company or offering any service. He’s raising money. For himself.
Hooper was a rising work-study senior at the University of South Florida in 1995. He hoped that his majors in math and chemistry would lead to a career in the medical field.
He also hoped that all the training and hard work he was putting in on the 400-meter run would would help him make the track team, which had been organized in 1993.
Then he noticed the rash over his right eye and the fever that wouldn’t go down. One knee became unusually sore.
“I thought it was because I was overtraining,” he said. “That’s what my trainers thought at first. They said, ‘Don’t do any workouts for a couple weeks. Relax.’ That’s what I was doing.”
One day between classes and track practice, while he was at his job on campus, a supervisor approached his desk.
“She probably got two feet from me and said, ‘Something is warm over here,’ ” said Hooper. “I was burning up. They sent me to the University of South Florida Medical Center and said I had a fever of 105 to 107.”
Hooper was diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, in which three other diseases overlap. The connective tissues essentially hold the cells of the body together. The disease, a disorder of the immune system, produces abnormal antibodies that attack the patient’s organs.
Medications are available to help control the symptoms, but there is no known cure.
“That started out very aggressively,” Hooper said.
The disease, and its aggressive course, led to Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, with which Hooper was diagnosed in 1998.
“That’s where my lungs have been damaged,” he said. “There’s a lot of scarring, holes in my lungs. And the only way to correct that is a dual lung transplant.
“So I’ve kind of got a two-parter I’m dealing with.”
Actually, there’s a third tine on the dagger coming straight at Hooper, now a 31-year-old who lives alone, getting by on disability payments from America Online-Time Warner.
Doctors at Duke University Hospital discovered a few months ago that his esophagus is losing its reflexive ability to move food to the stomach.
If a matching lung donor can be found, those doctors who have considered attempting the surgery would prefer “to cut me open and transfer both of them over at the same time,” Hooper said.
His failing esophagus, however, has persuaded surgeons to back away.
“The surgery itself is very high risk,” he said. “It’s even deadlier if the esophagus doesn’t work. That’s another obstacle that just occurred in the last couple of months.”
Hooper went to work for AOL in 2000 but had to leave in April.
“I was doing customer service, but it was really hard on me because, of course, you have to talk,” said Hooper, speaking through pronounced pauses and the occasional gasp. “It got to the point that, a lot of times, I wasn’t even able to talk to the members because I’m on such a high liter (oxygen) flow.”
Hooper is getting help from several sources as he tries to raise the $500,000 to $1 million that will be needed for the surgery and aftercare.
One of them is Gail Leonard, one of Hooper’s former professors at Remington College and now the owner of Computer Daze.
Another is Tony Butler, executive director of The Computer Spa, in the Beaver Street Enterprise Center.
“I’m sponsoring Gregory as much as possible,” said Butler. “I fully believe in his cause. I believe in him.
“Very rarely do you get a chance to even attempt to make a difference. This is it.”
Butler hopes to make the community aware of Hooper’s plight and, if possible, tie him into already established fund-raisers.
“Awareness kind of goes through peaks and valleys,” he said. “I’m trying to make this wave crest as long as possible.
“I think there are some very good medical institutions here, some very caring companies and some very caring people. They just aren’t aware.
“If people can do a cause for a puppy in a well, I think we can do one for a young man who’s trying to live each day to the fullest.”
(More information is available at www.computerdaze.com /greghooper. Phone numbers are 855-0139 for Gregory Hooper and 265-1909 for Tony Butler.)