www. Char l es tonPhys i c i ans . com | www.Hea l thL i nksChar l es ton . com | 85 that Eli indeed looked far too pale. A short while later, holding her son protectively in her arms, Stephanie learned the truth: Eli was in severe renal failure and would need to fight to survive. “His body was filtering nothing,” she said. “His hemoglobin was at 3.6. His kidneys were not making hormones; his bone marrow was not creating red blood cells. To this day, he is the sickest patient to present in that emergency room with renal failure. Dr. Katherine Twombley said she had never seen a child so sick.” There was no time to process the trauma, however – every moment mattered if Eli was to survive. The ER team would give him blood “to beef him up,” hoping to safely dialyze him without instigating a seizure. There was a strong possibility the child wouldn’t make it through the night. “I remember the looks on people’s faces,” Stephanie said. “There is no description of what my emotional feelings were. Being in shock. Exhausted.” Mercifully, Eli survived that first evening, and for the next six months underwent dialysis. Stephanie described the process of giving her own child injections as “surviving without processing,” working weekends and day shifts so she could be at his side while her husband continued practicing medicine. Finally, Eli was matched with a kidney – Stephanie’s own – and the transplant was performed in August 2014. Because the child was so tiny, doctors had to remove his kidney to make enough room for the transplant. A week after the operation was performed – the Clarks stayed with family in Charleston – Dr. Twombley sent them back home to Pawleys Island. “We had to stay a week for labs, then Dr. Kathy let us go home,” Stephanie said. “She was comfortable with that, knowing me. We had to come back twice a week for labs, then it changed to once a week, then once a month, then once every three months. I returned to work about six weeks after the transplant.” By then, a move down Highway 17 to Mount Pleasant was underway, and Stephanie had taken a job with MUSC, commuting with the help of her nanny – a retired nurse – to care for Eli and Gabe. By the middle of 2015, the family’s move was complete, and the Clarks had moved to the Charleston area full time. “It was perfect timing,” Stephanie said. “Eli did really well in the beginning. Then, in June 2017, he developed a rare complication to his transplant.” To read the rest of Eli Clark’s amazing journey, stay tuned for Part 2 in the March/April issue of HealthLinks Charleston.
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