— submitted||Elli McIntyre embraces her bone marrow donor, Brendan Mungovan of Bridgewater, Mass. at their first meeting.

Six-year-old little 'miracle' beats cancer despite odds

Local girl over
comes Lukemia
through donor’s
gift of life

By Mary Garrison
Tribune-Courier Reporter
mgarrison@tribunecourier.com

MARSHALL COUNTY – Elli McIntyre is a 6-year-old miracle. A healthy, active kindergarten student at Central Elementary, she’s the picture of a typical child.

Except that Elli’s life has been anything but typical.

When Elli was just 2-years-old, she got a fever. It seemed like nothing at first, though for three weeks, it would come and go with one strange side-effect. When the fever came, Elli began to limp.

Growing concerned, Elli’s parents, James and Teresa McIntyre, took her to local pediatrician Jonda Young. Young knew almost immediately something was very wrong.

She ordered blood tests, and her fears were confirmed. Elli had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Elli and her family went to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. that very night. Within 72 hours of her initial visit to Young, Elli began her first round of chemotherapy.

After months of worry and often painful treatment at St. Jude’s, in March of 2007 Elli’s family got some much-welcomed news. Elli had gone into remission.

The victory was short lived.

“She was less than a month away from her ‘no more chemo’ party when we found out the cancer had come back,” said Lee Ann Holt, Elli’s grandmother.

It was one of the darkest days for Elli’s family, Holt recalled.
Elli began the induction phase of chemotherapy once again in July. And while times were tough, her spirits remained high.

“She’s just got so much strength,” Holt had said in an interview in November 2007. “She keeps us all going.”

That strength earned Elli a place in the limelight. She appeared on the Today Show during St. Jude’s annual Thanks and Giving campaign that year.

At the time, she was undergoing preparations for a bone marrow transplant, a procedure physicians at St. Jude’s felt would be her best chance at survival.

Though she had gone into remission once again in September, Elli had to endure extensive chemotherapy and full body radiation to kill the remaining bone marrow in her system so donor cells could graft more easily into her body.

“We had to give her a bath every four hours around the clock,” Holt said. “The chemo was so heavy it would seep through her skin and could be a source of infection. Anyone that handled her at all had to wear rubber gloves. Every four hours, around the clock.”

On Dec. 21, 2007, Elli received her transplant. She remained in isolation for six-weeks after the procedure.

It was a difficult time for Elli. However, her endurance paid off. Elli’s transplant went remarkably well.

“Her body took to the donor cells really well,” said Danny Holt, Elli’s grandfather. “It went even better than the doctors anticipated.”

So much better that Elli’s physicians were able to take her off of the rejection medication regimen earlier than anticipated.

Last April, Elli was able to return home with good news to boot. “She was 100 percent donor cells,” Holt said. “No cancer.”

Since then Elli has continued to make a full recovery. She returns to St. Jude’s every three months for thorough check-ups. Soon, Danny said the appointments would be every six months, and eventually, Elli will only have to return once a year.

“She’ll have to go back until she’s 18-years-old,” Danny said. “She’s doing very well though. They had told us not to expect her to be able to start school until this past January.”

Elli began kindergarten in September 2008, just one month after her classmates.

It’s something the Holts said would never have been possible without the altruism of Elli’s bone marrow donor, Brendan Mungovan of Bridgewater, Mass.

The 36-year-old father of two has given of himself twice now. Mungovan had two life-long friends that had been diagnosed with cancer, and his wife Christina had a friend, as well.

Being so close to those affected, the Mungovans registered with the National Bone Marrow Donor Bank.

Three months later, Mungovan got the first call. Drawing from his blood cells, Mungovan donated to a 47-year-old man battling leukemia in the midwest.

One year and three weeks after his first donation, Mungovan got the call about Elli.

He accepted without hesitation. However, the process was, indeed, more gruellilng than the last.

“He bled for four days straight,” Danny said. “It was three weeks before the pain dulled.”

However, the outcome is priceless.

“They’re family to us,” Holt said. “They’ll never know just what they’ve given us.”

The National Bone Marrow Donor Bank has restrictions that won’t allow donor recipients to know who their donor is for one year. However, Elli did have ways of thanking Mungovan.

“She could send him things,” Holt said. “She made cards and wrote letters. She sent him a mold of her hand.”

Mungovan got his first correspondence from Elli on Easter weekend of last year.

“He thought it only fitting we should meet for the first time on Easter,” Holt said.

And so they did. On the Wednesday before Easter Elli’s family went to the airport in Nashville, Tenn. to pick up their treasured guests, Mungovan, his wife and their two daughters, the youngest of which is Elli’s age.

“There’s no way we could ever thank them enough,” Danny said. “Before they came, Lee Ann and I were sitting here one night and she looked at me and said, ‘do you think he has any clue what he really did?’ We wanted to find a way to make them understand.”

Danny put his video making skills to work, documenting Elli’s life from birth to present in DVD form.

“We put everything in it,” Danny said. “Pictures, songs like ‘Jesus Take the Wheel’ and ‘Calling All Angels’— every moment we could capture of Elli’s life in that small space to let him know just what it meant to us.”

The gesture touched the Mungovan family in just the way they hoped.

“He cried,” Holt said. “The second time he saw it, he couldn’t sit through it before he had to leave the room for a bit. I’m not sure if he really realized what he had done until then.”

And the connections Elli and her family have shared with the Mungovans are lasting. The family is already making plans for a trip to Bridgewater, Mass. this summer.

“We’re kindred spirits, as Christina put it,” Danny said. “God works in the strangest of ways.”

Despite the trials of the last four years, Elli and her family have emerged stronger and more grateful for the time they’re given.

“I treasure the time I get to spend with my grandchildren,” Holt said. “The little things that may have gotten to me before, but once you’ve walked through the halls of St. Jude’s, it changes your whole life. Those things don’t seem to matter so much anymore.”

And prayer is, sometimes, all one has, Danny said.

“When you’re put in the position to do nothing but hope and pray and everything else is in God and someone else’s hands, you realize how helpless you can be and how much faith has to play,“ Danny said. “We had prayer, and Brendan was the answer to that prayer."

“He gave us life,” Holt said. “He gave Elli life.”