The end of the story is well known - Maclin was cleared of having any serious illness, including lymphoma, a form of cancer that his family felt certain he had. He returned to the Eagles and didn't miss a start until sitting out the last three weeks with a hamstring injury, but will be back on the field Sunday in Miami.
Less known is that for Jeff and Cindy Parres, Maclin's surrogate parents, the tense search for a resolution didn't end once their son went back to practice. One doctor still worried that Maclin might have had a rare and less treatable condition.
"I was obviously relieved, but there was a couple other possibilities on the table," Jeff Parres said, including the chance that Maclin might have had an unusual condition called inflammatory pseudotumor. "That thing was always lingering in the back of everybody's mind."
The receiver knew only some of the details when he returned to Philadelphia. But Parres, a urologist who has cared for Maclin since the player's childhood and closely monitored his treatment, still waited and worried in St. Louis, just as the family did all summer.
It scared everybody
For weeks, Parres was sure his son had lymphoma.
Starting in February, he had watched Maclin's energy sag. Home with the family in a suburb near St. Louis, Maclin had a low-grade fever and sweated through his sheets at night. He lost weight, 15 pounds by early April, Parres said. Doctors found signs of internal inflammation, but, at first, nothing that seemed worse than a virus.
Then Maclin returned to Philadelphia, where he met with Eagles internist Gary Dorshimer. Dorshimer thought Maclin's spleen was enlarged.
"I immediately knew then the potential that he might have lymphoma. That was the first thing that came to my mind," Parres said. Until then, "it hadn't crossed my mind that it was anything serious."
