Mothers literally give part of themselves to save sons

For some mothers, love knows no boundaries. Two South Carolina moms have literally given a part of themselves to their sons. As a result, a sweet second-grader from Bishopville, South Carolina and a happy first-grader from Mount Pleasant survived life-threatening kidney problems. 

Their families shared their stories in hopes of encouraging other people to consider becoming organ donors.

Jahmez Thomas’ story

Jahmez Thomas makes himself comfortable during his checkups at MUSC Children’s Health. So comfortable, in fact, that he fell asleep on the examination table during a recent visit. 

A very early morning wake-up to get ready for the two-hour drive from Bishopville to Charleston probably had something to do with that. But so does Jahmez’s familiarity with the transplant team he sees on a regular basis to make sure his body isn’t rejecting the kidney his mother, Jamesha Thomas, donated to him in May. 

Thomas said her son’s trouble started when he was three and came down with an ear infection. After he started taking antibiotics, “I noticed rashes, and he was swollen.”

A doctor found protein in Jahmez’s urine and referred him to Katherine Twombley, M.D., a kidney specialist at MUSC Children’s Health. The program is ranked among the 25 best in the country by U.S. News and World Report.

Twombley diagnosed Jahmez with the second most common cause of kidney failure in kids. “He had FSGS,” Twombley said. “Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. It’s basically progressive scarring of the kidney for unknown reasons, to the point that he needed a transplant.”

Anything that stimulates the immune system can trigger the flare-up in kids who are predisposed to FSGS, Twombley said, including something as simple as a bug bite or a cold. In Jahmez’s case, it was the ear infection. There was no known history of FSGS in his family.

Thomas donated a kidney to her son last May. Twombley said there was a 1 in 2 chance that FSGS would attack the new kidney. It did.

“He recurred within 24 hours,” Twombley said. “But part of our success is, we’re diagnosing it early, and we’re very aggressive in how we’re treating it.”

She was able to save the transplanted kidney with the help of plasmapheresis. “The blood is basically made up of plasma and cells,” Twombley said. “We take the blood out of his body, separate the plasma from the cells, remove the plasma and give him back fresh plasma that doesn’t have whatever’s attacking his kidneys. Then we give him medicine to hopefully calm everything down.”

It worked. “He’s in remission,” Twombley said with a big smile. “He’s a transplant patient but no longer has FSGS.”

Eli Clark’s story

Like Jahmez, Eli Clark needed a new kidney, the most common type of organ to be transplanted. The Mount Pleasant first-grader’s mother, Stephanie Clark, is an intensive care unit nurse at MUSC Health. So when Eli was diagnosed with pneumonia and never fully recovered, she knew it was time to take him back to his pediatrician. But he still didn’t get better. 

“He was very lethargic and didn’t feel well,” Clark said. “Then Friday, around one in the afternoon, he joined me on the couch after I came home from work. Eli sat up and vomited, and it looked like coffee grounds.”

She rushed him to the hospital. “His hemoglobin was 3.6. Normal is 12.” He had anemia, which can be linked to kidney disease. “There was no kidney function left,” his mother said. “If we hadn’t brought him, he probably wouldn’t have made it through.”

Twombley sat with the sick little boy and his parents while he had dialysis, a way of getting rid of waste and water that the kidneys would normally take care of. 

His parents learned that his kidneys were the size of a newborn’s. When they heard that, “we knew he’d need a transplant to survive,” his mother said. Luckily, her blood type was a match, and she gave Eli one of her kidneys. 

Today, Eli is back on his feet and back in school at Coastal Christian Preparatory School. “He’s phenomenal,” his mother said. “Full of life and full of energy. Everybody who meets him falls in love with him.”

The need for organ donors

The National Kidney Foundation reports that there are more than 121,000 people waiting for organ transplants in the U.S. right now. One hundred thousand of them need new kidneys. Some patients like Jahmez and Eli are lucky enough to have living donors, but others wait for a donor for years. The median wait time is more than three and a half years. If you’re interested in becoming a living donor and giving a kidney to someone who needs a transplant or making your organs available for donation after your death, visit the United Network for Organ Sharing.