By Anna Grace Moore
Photos by Kelsea Schafer
It’s a funny thing–faith. One cannot see it; yet, he is expected to believe that with it, he can move any mountain blocking his path.
Krystalyn Boman will be the first to tell you that sometimes, miracles happen, but other times, they don’t. A big difference for those who believe is they tend to find solace during grief, knowing God will use their struggles for good.
Often, all it takes to help one find faith is for a friend to help them believe.
In 2019, after sustaining a concussion at her school, Krystalyn was taken to Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham for testing. To her family’s dismay, doctors discovered she not only had a concussion, but she also had a brain tumor the size of a lemon.
“They told us it had probably been there since birth,” Krystal Boman, Krystalyn’s mother, says. “She did have one or two seizures when she was about 3 or 4, but they thought they were just febrile seizures. That’s when our journey started.”
Krystalyn was only 7 years old at the time.
Little did she know just how exhausting the following years would be. Krystlayn underwent anatomy scans every six months to monitor the tumor, and in April 2022, doctors discovered the tumor grew rapidly from the size of a lemon to that of a grapefruit.
The tumor was located in her right, frontal lobe on her optic nerve. The doctors told the Bomans if she did not go under the knife soon, she would lose eye sight in one or potentially both of her eyes.
On June 16, 2022, the surgeons at Children’s successfully removed Krystalyn’s brain tumor, and everyone thought the nightmare had ended. Krystalyn even got to meet former University of Alabama (UA) Quarterback Bryce Young and received a care package from legendary former UA Head Football Coach Nick Saban.
Life seemed swell for a few short years. Then in December 2023, Krystalyn started experiencing some pain along her spinal column, and by June 2024, it had become unbearable.
“We took her to her neurologist, and they kept doing X-rays and coughed it up as growing pains,” Krystal says. “They put us in physical therapy. They thought that she had pulled something. They told us that it was a mild case of scoliosis.”
Krystalyn was later misdiagnosed with grade 3 scoliosis. On June 7, 2024, she attended the First Friday Festival in Calera with her family, asking, ‘When are we going to the festival?’
Quickly realizing her daughter was becoming delirious, Krystal rushed Krystalyn to the ER, where the doctors ran tests showing a fluid build-up behind her frontal lobe. Medical professionals inserted a ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt into Krystalyn’s skull. It relieves pressure on the affected area by draining fluid through a catheter into the bloodstream.
The team drained 30 millimeters of fluid from Krystalyn’s brain, calling her a “miracle child” and saying she might not have woken up if she had gone to sleep prior to coming to the hospital. After the procedure, the doctors told the Boman family that Krystalyn had multiple brain tumors called ganglioglioma of which were too small and too many to operate.
Ganglioglioma tumors are allegedly stationary, and once removed, they are not likely to grow back. Unfortunately for Krystalyn, her family says she was either misdiagnosed or just had one of those rare cases.
The doctors working with Krystalyn instead recommended she undergo 18 months of chemotherapy–twice a week for two hours each session. They would not refer her to any other hospital for a second opinion.
“What upset me the most was they were bent on starting chemo immediately,” says Ty Boman, Krystalyn’s father. “They were ready to cut her, put the port in and start chemo. I was just like, ‘Can she take a breath? Can we pray about this? Can we get a second opinion?’”
If there’s one thing the Bomans all agree on, it is that everything that happens is a part of God’s divine plan. While it has not been easy, the Boman family says their trusting the Lord has helped them navigate every mountain in their journey.
Krystal joined a St. Jude’s Research Hospital Facebook group and saw numerous posts about Dr. Paul D. Klimo Jr., who is the Chief of the Pediatric Neurosurgery Division in the Surgery Department at St. Jude’s. Every single post said something along the lines of how he saved one child’s life after another.
With dwindling hope, she sent out a shot in the dark. Normally, St. Jude’s only takes patient referrals from medical providers, but Dr. Klimo responded to Krystal’s email and called her less than 48 hours later to discuss potential treatment options.
A week passed, and Krystalyn was at St. Jude’s being evaluated for a new, oral chemotherapy drug that is not yet FDA-approved called Mirdametinib. She is now a part of a clinical research trial, SJ901, at St. Jude’s to test the drug’s effectiveness.
“I’ve been telling her from the beginning, ‘This journey is not about us,’” Krystal says. “Somebody else coming behind us is going to need exactly what she’s been through and what we’ve been through as a family.”
During Krystalyn’s first week at St. Jude’s, medical experts conducted numerous tests to determine her eligibility. Once she began taking Mirdametinib on Aug. 20, 2024, St. Jude’s evaluated her for at least 30 days to make sure she did not suffer any adverse side effects.
“We found out later that if we had started chemo at [another hospital], St. Jude’s would not have taken her on as a patient,” Krystal says, later adding, “if we would have started the chemo, they wouldn’t have had enough data to say, ‘SJ901 will work for her.’”
According to Krystal, at the onset of Krystalyn’s treatment, she was the only African American person taking Mirdametinib in the U.S.
On stjude.org in a video interview titled, “A Study of MEK Inhibitor Mirdametinib for Low-Grade Glioma,” Dr. Giles Robinson, Associate Member, St. Jude Faculty, says the effectiveness of Mirdametinib is exciting, considering how fast the drug’s response time has been in laboratory studies.
“This is really exciting for a group of children because these tumors, while they grow slowly, they affect things like vision,” he says in the video interview. “They affect things like neuro-cognition, and if you can put them on a medicine and shrink this down, you can alleviate a lot of their symptoms and have them lead near normal lives while taking this medicine.”
In October 2024, an anatomy scan showed Krystalyn’s cancer presence as having decreased significantly. She is now almost cancer-free, and the only side effects she has experienced include partial hair loss, a slight skin rash and some irregular gastrointestinal movements.
Originally, Krystalyn was told she would need 70 weeks of intense chemotherapy, and now thanks to Mirdametinib, she is nearly cancer-free after just 10 weeks. While she still has a long road ahead of her, Krystalyn says she owes her life to St. Jude’s and is extremely grateful for the “second chance” she was given.
“It’s been hard, but there’s a lot of things I’ve learned through all of this [such as] learning how to cope with everything,” Krystalyn says. “One thing that I’ve learned from all of this is that it’s okay not to be okay. I’ve learned that life is going to be hard, but eventually, you’ll be able to get through it.”
Ty believes his daughter’s unwavering faith through her diagnosis and treatment has strengthened his own belief in God and even made him a better father.
“A quote that we say a lot is ‘If all you can do is all you can do, then all you can do is enough,’” he says. “We trust God. You do what you can do, and that which you can’t do, you give over to God for Him to be who He says He is.”
Ty remembers breaking down, watching his daughter receive the news her tumor returned and she would need chemotherapy. Yet, what he also remembers is Krystalyn saying, “Okay, let’s do this.”
Despite months battling cancer, Krystalyn has conquered every step as the epitome of faith. She worked with a tutor one-on-one while at St. Jude’s, so she wouldn’t fall behind academically.
Recently, she has become connected through her Facebook page, Standing with Krystalyn, with a local salon owner of whom she is now apprenticing under. One day, Krystalyn would like to own a hair salon, and at just 12 years old even with cancer, she’s working to learn the trade.
“I do believe that God allowed our daughter to get sick for a whole bigger purpose than we would ever, ever, ever know,” Ty says. “We don’t know what that purpose is, but we will walk in whatever that purpose is. That’s what we’re doing now. There’s other people out there that need to hear her story.”
To other young, pediatric cancer patients, Krystalyn’s message is to believe in miracles. While it can be difficult to keep faith in the Lord, she says bleak situations do not yield impossible results.
She believes she is living, breathing proof of the goodness of God, and if He did it before, He will do it again.
After all, faith as small as a mustard seed is enough to move mountains.
To keep tabs on Krystalyn’s journey or for more inspiring stories of faith, follow the Bomans’ Facebook page, (Standing with Krystalyn).
The Power of Faith
“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
-Matthew 17:20
