Miracle Man survives his second rare disease
Published: May 9, 2006
A fungus was eating Clair Donald Clark’s face, slowly killing him.
After he lost his right eye and much of his sinus tissue, his breathing had slowed as he lay in a bed at University Hospital. His daughter, Diane Curtis, figured all she could do was hold his hand as he lingered in pain or died.
But Clark, 76, beat the infection, and a month later was sitting on a hospital bed at Frazier Rehab Institute in Louisville, a bandage over his eye and an arm around his daughter.
He had survived mucormycosis, which strikes 500 Americans a year. Although he is now blind, most of his face is still intact.
This wasn’t the first time Clark, a diabetic, had lived through a rare and deadly disease. Two years earlier, he lost a large section of his right thigh to flesh-eating bacteria.
How did he cheat death twice?
Doctors credit quick diagnosis and aggressive medical action. Curtis points to her father’s “amazing will to live” and the same spirit that made him fly planes for fun, build his first house and joke even at the darkest times. And Clark and his wife believe God had a hand in his survival.
“I think it was divine intervention that guided the doctors’ hands,” he said. God “has been busy looking over me.”
Clark has earned a new nickname used by family and medical professionals alike: “Miracle Man.”
Infection strikes
Clark’s latest medical crisis began one morning in February, when he woke with a numb nose, one eye swollen shut and the other inflamed.
“I see four of you,” he recalled telling his wife, Dorothy Daily Clark.
Weak from pneumonia and diabetes, Clark was vulnerable to the infection, which kills as many as 80 percent of its victims. It is caused by inhaling fungus spores found in soil and decaying vegetation.
With the disease progressing by the minute, the Morganfield, Ky., couple knew they needed to get to a doctor quickly.
Clark eventually was taken to University Hospital, where doctors had successfully treated a mucormycosis victim from Owensboro years earlier. That man, Mark Tatum, eventually had an acrylic prosthesis made to cover his severely disfigured face.
By the time Clark reached the hospital, he couldn’t see.
Dr. Kenneth Parker, one of his physicians, said he had eight operations, and doctors removed significant amounts of infected sinus tissue on his right side. They also pumped powerful anti-fungal medications into his body. He was put on an insulin drip to control his diabetes, dialysis for failing kidneys and a respirator.
“There were several times where we were very concerned about whether or not he would make it,” Parker said.
Doctors kept asking whether Clark wanted to continue his treatment, and he kept nodding “yes” — even when they told him they would need to remove his right eye. His family asked only that doctors leave his eyelid and lashes, believing he might someday get a prosthetic eye.
Clark’s wife prayed constantly and tried to keep his mind off his illness, at one point leading him on an imaginary plane trip to a lake and urging him to “take flight.” Clark had flown since he was 17 and she had been his first passenger.
Finally, after more than two months, the fungus was gone and long-term recovery could begin.
A little more than a week ago, an occupational therapist at Frazier taught Clark how to walk without getting tangled in oxygen tubing. His wife walked with him.
“Where am I?” he asked, breathing hard.
His wife patted his arm. “You’re right here,” she answered.
Flesh-eating bacteria
Dealing with mucormycosis has reminded the couple of Clark’s fight with necrotizing fasciitis in early 2004. Commonly known as flesh-eating disease, it is believed to strike as many as 1,500 Americans a year.
To survive, Clark needed 14 infection-removal procedures and two plastic surgeries. He wound up with part of his right thigh paralyzed, but eventually regained use of the limb.
He tries to laugh now about all he’s been through.
“I really didn’t think I needed two exotic diseases,” Clark quipped, smiling.
His family is used to his gallows humor. While recovering from flesh-eating bacteria disease, people would ask how he felt, and he’d reply lightheartedly: “How do you think I am? I’ve got a hole in my leg.”
Parker, the University Hospital doctor, said, “His attitude made a real difference. For most things like this, we doctors can only do so much.”
Although the family is hopeful, doctors don’t think sight will return to Clark’s left eye. So the retired engineer will have to give up flying and might even have to sell the 19th-century home that he’s been painstakingly restoring.
But Clark doesn’t dwell on what he’s lost. Even in his hospital bed, he excitedly brainstormed new areas to delve into, like genealogy.
“You pick yourself off the mat and shake your head and decide you’re not going to take this lying down,” he said. “Then you make something out of the extra time you have been given.”
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