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NAVIGATING FAMILY HEALTH CHALLENGES The McKelveys have two children, 22-year-old Anna Helen, who heads to graduate school at UGA this fall after earning a bachelor's degree there last spring, and Michael, 19, enrolled in special education at Mary Persons High School in Forsyth where he'll remain until he's 22. McKelvey says, "It's his favorite place. He loves school, his teachers and friends." Born in 2002, doctors suspected Michael had growth issues in utero. Constantly battling colds and infections, at 4 months old Michael was rushed to an urgent care facility and quickly transferred to Macon's Children's Hospital where he was intubated. Two weeks later, he was diagnosed with pneumocystis pneumonia, an opportunistic infection striking immune-compromised individuals. After the diagnosis, Michael was transported to Children's Egleston Hospital in Atlanta. There, via a new test developed in Switzerland, a pediatric immunologist diagnosed him with cartilage hair hypoplasia and severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare form of dwarfism commonly accompanied by immune system issues. The McKelveys learned too that Michael had no functioning immune system, and astonishingly, that they both carried the recessive gene. Impossibly rare, the condition is only found with any statistical significance in two rural counties in Finland and within the U.S. Amish population. Michael's single treatment path was a bone marrow transplant with 3-year-old Anna Helen serving as donor. But it took months to get Michael healthy enough for surgery and for the chemotherapy preceding the procedure. That December, Michael, then 8 months old, underwent the transplant and remained hospitalized until January 2003. Although it's unknown whether he will require a booster transplant, he's not been hospitalized since. "If not for his diagnosis at the Children's Hospital, Michael probably would have passed away because of his inability to thrive," says McKelvey, who describes his son as "a happy child who loves every person on Earth. He is very social, but nonverbal. ... He understands what's said to him and communicates with a talking device. Cognitively, he can't read or do math, but his ability to navigate a computer is amazing." Now, all U.S. children are screened at birth for the immune system disorder Michael endures because early discovery increases the chances for an immediate transplant to avoid some of the manifestations. MIDDLE GEORGIA MAN Ryan and Rebecca McKelvey led parallel lives while growing up in Macon. Although they attended different high schools, they had mutual friends and their parents were acquainted, but according to Rebecca, "they never put two and two together, and although we attended the Terry College of Business at the same time, we never knew each other." They met as adults at the former W. Rucker's on Riverside Drive. McKelvey jokes, "We wish we could say we met in PRECEEDING PAGES: RYAN MCKELVEY IN HIS DAMES FERRY HOME OFFICE, WHICH IS DECORATED WITH MANY ITEMS FROM HIS COMPANY. BELOW: AT LEFT, THE MCKELVEY FAMILY AT THEIR FORSYTH HOME. AT RIGHT, A PAINTING OF MCKELVEY AS A YOUNG BOY. OPPOSITE: A GARDEN PLOT MCKELVEY BUILT HIMSELF. 90 maconmagazine.com | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021