The Clark family was enjoying life in their new Mount Pleasant home after moving in 2015. Eli Clark “seemed to be doing really well,” according to his mother, Stephanie Clark, in the wake of his kidney transplant. But during the summer of 2017, things took an unexpected and dire turn.
It started when Stephanie was at home one June afternoon doing routine chores. Suddenly, Eli could not move one side of his body – but she noticed his arm was involuntarily twitching. She still had Dr. Katherine Twombley’s phone number readily available, so she didn’t hesitate to call the trusted physician. Then she drove her child to the emergency room at the Medical University of South Carolina in downtown Charleston, “going 90 miles an hour and thankful it was not rush hour.”
“As I was going over the Ravenel, his arm twitched again and he was screaming ‘Mommy, help me!’” she recalled, her throat catching.
At the ER, the brain attack team did not think the child was having a stroke, but they immediately declared something was not right. As Eli had a complete seizure in his mother’s arms, the team gave him an IV of medicine — then, the child started screaming and wailing, having had an adverse reaction to the medication. At this point, one entire side of his body was limp. Mother and child were escorted swiftly to the pediatric intensive care unit, where Eli was given an EEG test and, the next day, a sedation MRI.
The resulting news? Eli had a brain tumor — specifically, a B cell post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder — which Dr. Twombley had suspected as soon as she heard the results of Eli’s scans.
“She’d done the research, and she knew what it was before the biopsy,” Stephanie said. “It’s a very rare lymphoma. Most patients end up dying. Eli’s was only on his brain, but most people have it in multiple areas.”
While some families might have crumpled at this news, the Clarks courageously soldiered on, knowing their son had faced tough obstacles before and had come out on the other side. Doctors prepared to give the boy chemotherapy and radiation — in fact, Eli was one of the first patients ever to receive his type of radiation for his type of lymphoma. Stephanie praised Dr. Samuel Cooper, the oncologist who took care of Eli during this time, saying that his “passion and care for his patients is phenomenal.”
Treatments were successful, and Eli’s scans have remained clean since November 2017. The Clark family maintains appointments every December, when Eli gets another full MRI and a checkup visit with Dr. Cooper. “We are always so anxious when we go, and they are always so accommodating and kind,” Stephanie said.
Now 13 years old, Eli is a mostly normal kid with just a few delays in writing and memory, according to Stephanie.
“He will tell you that he has survived death twice,” she said, beaming.
To celebrate his triumphs and the entire family’s faith, Eli was baptized last summer, in company of some of the very same people who prayed for him in the earlier years. To Stephanie, this is no surprise — she had visions of community members praying for her son and even comforting her husband in the hospital waiting room more than once.
“Eli is just an amazing kid,” she mused. “The child has had more happen to him in one year than some people ever have, and he is incredibly strong. He is here because God has big plans for him — he has a purpose.”
By Denise K. James
