learn, live, hope

During college, Angela and Joe welcomed a son, Andrew. He was a surprise, but the new parents knew they wanted to give him a sibling one day. Almost three years later, the family welcomed a little girl named Morgan into their lives. Whereas Andrew quickly fell in line with Joe’s personality—amenable, yet private—Morgan was the spitting image of Angela—stubborn and spunky. “She told you exactly what she thought of you,” says Angela. “The more you told her she couldn’t do something, the more she would do it.”

Dizziness while running; Angela thought it couldn’t be that bad. Trouble swimming; that’s when Angela thought something was off with her daughter. “She had always been a strong swimmer, even from the age of six,” Angela says.

Two days later Morgan woke up in the night throwing up. What was most concerning was the fact that she didn’t remember any of it the next morning. As Angela asked her daughter about a play date at a friend’s house, she rubbed Morgan’s forehead. Morgan told her that hurt and Angela then noticed a bruise. Morgan explained a

46 toy had hit her on the head at her friend’s house. Could she have a concussion?

Angela remembers the details of April 2008 like it was yesterday because the memories of that month will haunt her forever. “Morgan’s symptoms came on very abruptly,” Angela recalls, but says initially, nothing struck her as dangerous. Grumpiness; which her mother dismissed as typical end-of-school anxiety.

Morgan wanted to go to school, Angela obliged, but she also made an appointment with Morgan’s pediatrician for later that day. They never made it. The school nurse called that afternoon to say Morgan was having trouble on the swing set. “They said she couldn’t keep her head up,” Angela remembers. “Well, by the time I picked her up, I knew the pediatrician’s office was not the place to go. We were headed straight to the emergency room.”

While she lay in the backseat and her mom sped to the hospital, Morgan couldn’t hold her head up and her eyes kept rolling. “I carried her in and we hardly made it in the door before they were wheeling her in for a CT scan,” Angela says. As someone who works in a diagnostic clinic and routinely sees patients undergo neurological exams, Angela prepared for the worst.

Meanwhile, as the Kolling’s dealt with this devastating news, folks in their hometown of Davenport began secretly finishing the family’s home. Neighbors installed windows, put down flooring and scrubbed every inch of the place to remove any dust that may harm Morgan in her delicate state. It was the first of many acts of kindness this close community of people would do to help the Kolling’s through this emotional time.

On April 24, 2008, Morgan had a craniotomy and the tumor was removed. “She did very well, compared to most kids,” Angela says. “Many can’t walk, talk or eat,

“I told Joe, ‘She has a brain tumor,’” Angela says. “And he goes, ‘You’re always so negative.’ And I go, ‘NO, I know. I’m her mother.’”

Angela, it turns out, was right. The doctors came in and said they believed Morgan had brain cancer. “I just remember it being a blur of confusing words and medical terminology,” she says. “We grabbed a notebook and started to write down everything they said.” but she was able to do all those things. The doctors were amazed.”

A day later, on the advice of local doctors, the Kolling’s left their home [which was in the middle of a major remodeling project] and took Morgan to a special pediatric neurologist in the Twin Cities. There, they learned their only daughter had a very aggressive form of brain cancer called medulloblastoma.

Nobody—or nothing—was going to tell Morgan Kolling how to live her life. And so the battle for Morgan’s survival began; and so had Angela’s journey to try to save her little girl.

Unfortunately, Angela knew all too well the fight her daughter was facing. “Cancer runs high in my family, my mom died of cancer,” she explains. Her grandfather and his brother also died from the disease. “All I knew was that everyone that I knew who had cancer hadn’t survived. And I’ll never forget when she looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want to die.’ You just want to tell them that they’re going to make it.”

Angela plunged into helping Morgan through her course of treatment. Morgan had 3 different types of chemotherapy sessions plus 31 doses of radiation, 11 targeted at her brain, the rest at her spine. “Doctors told us that brain cancer will only spread to the spine and spinal fluids,” Angela explains. “They said it’s like a dandelion, you can blow the head off, but you never know where the seeds will land. So they had to treat her spine like the cancer was already there.”

The treatments were brutal on Morgan and just as terrifying for Angela to watch knowing there was nothing she could do but wait to see if the poison pulsing through her daughter would eliminate the cancer. “When she was doing the high dose chemo, we had to bathe her 4 to 6 times a day because the chemo on her skin would burn her,” Angela says.

But through all the drives to the hospital from Davenport and the sleepless nights lying by her daughter’s side, from holding Morgan’s hair back when she got sick to keeping her mind off the cancer by playing countless numbers of board games, Angela was there. No matter how exhausted or frightened she was, Angela tried to never let Morgan see it.

“Angie took it head on and made sure Morgan didn’t miss a single pill,” says Joe. “But on the other hand, she made a point to get Morgan out shopping and doing girl things as much as possible. If Morgan wanted to do something, Angie made sure we did everything possible to get it done.”

over 2,500 children under the age of 20 lose their lives to cancer every year

Remarkably, through it all, Angela and Joe found a new strength in their relationship. Whereas some couples—especially ones with opposite personalities like Angela and Joe—drift apart during a family crisis, Morgan’s parents accepted the way each other was dealing with their daughter’s battle and allowed each other space to have good days and bad days. “I think I tried to be more optimistic at the beginning, but Angie had to pick me up just as many times as I had to pick her up,” Joe says. “Angie would tell me exactly what kind of day she was having and I would tend to bottle it and unload everything once a month or so. It wasn’t always rosy that way and we had to battle through that difference in personality for a while. We figured it out though.”

Their son, Andrew, was also a big help. “I’m just so proud of Andrew,” explains Angela. He began learning household chores like laundry and cooking to help ease his parents’ burden. He kept his grades up. And perhaps most importantly says Angela, he didn’t let Morgan’s illness affect his relationship with his sister. “They fought constantly,” Angela says laughing. “They certainly had a love, but they were only 2 ½ years apart,” she explains. “They both liked to instigate. But it was so nice to see their personalities didn’t change just because Morgan was sick.”

Perhaps it was Morgan’s fearlessness toward cancer, her brother’s unwillingness to have the disease come between them, or her parents unwavering support for

Although the long days were tough, Morgan, now 7, loved being back in school. Her teachers in Kindred even brought in a cot for when she needed rest and kept a special blanket and pillow in a plastic bag off to the side so she wouldn’t be exposed to harmful germs while her immune system was depleted from chemotherapy. Angela says the way people reached out to her daughter still amazes her to this day. “Her school really pulled together,” she says, adding, “That’s what living in a small town is all about.”

During this time Morgan maintained a positive attitude that radiated to her entire family, including Angela. “Morgan was so upbeat that it was hard to think she would not beat this,” Angela says. “She was determined.”

However, Morgan’s bravery was no match for the beast inside her brain and in the middle of the flood of 2009 each other and their daughter, but by October, Morgan had successfully completed her treatment.

It takes most kids who undergo a similar course of treatment about 3 months to get back to school. She returned to classes in just eleven days.

Angela’s heart sank as familiar symptoms started to appear again. Grumpiness. Dizziness. Trouble walking. Morgan’s doctors told Angela her daughter was just depressed. It was a long journey and this was just another bump in the road to recovery. But as the next week went by, Angela saw Morgan’s condition deteriorate even more. “By the time we brought her in, she couldn’t walk,” she says.

An MRI revealed that in just a matter of months, the cancer had returned to Morgan’s brain and had taken over her spine. Angela knew her daughter would not live through this and it broke her heart. “When you’re handed a healthy baby you never think you’ll be getting a diagnosis like that when they’re 6, 7, 8-years-old,” she admits. “It’s shattering. It’s terrible. It’s something that I wish no other parent had to feel.”

up to 75% of the children with cancer can be cured

But Angela wasn’t about to let Morgan go just yet. Her little girl had a lot of living left to do; starting with a trip to Florida sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Dakota. It was meant to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of Morgan’s cancer diagnosis. Instead, and unbeknownst to the Kolling’s at the time, it turned into an opportunity for Morgan to leave behind her legacy.

The family spent a whirlwind week at amusement parks across Orlando but on their last day, they decided to do something they had never done before—go to the beach. Even though Morgan couldn’t walk and was confined to a wheelchair, Angela wanted to make sure Morgan could still experience new things. “As her parents, we sort of knew where this was headed,” Angela says. “She had done all the treatments that were possible.”

Morgan documented her experiences that week by drawing. She would color pictures in the van, in the hotel room, on the beach, wherever she could. Angela couldn’t figure out why—so she asked. “Morgan told me, ‘I’m going to sell them and give the money to Make-A-Wish,’” Angela recalls. “I said, ‘Ok, if you’re going to donate the money, then I’ll make sure you get around town to sell them.’”

It didn’t take long. As Angela helped her daughter make good on her promise, word of Morgan’s drawings quickly spread throughout Davenport and everyone was buying Morgan’s pictures and supporting her cause. One day, Morgan’s teachers had a surprise. They had taken the pictures they bought and made a gift pack of cards featuring Morgan’s artwork as a gift for Angela, but they also wanted to do more. “They called me up and said, ‘With your permission, we’d like to do this as a fundraiser.’ Of course I said yes,” Angela says. “So the teachers would order cards of Morgan’s artwork and on their time off, they would package them up and we would sell them or they would sell them.”

Lisa Davis, one of Angela’s good friends who helped sell and distribute Morgan’s cards, says seeing an average family’s life turned upside down by cancer spurred the town to rally behind the Kolling’s. “This could happen to any of us and when one of our own needed assistance, the community of Davenport was there,” Lisa says.

Morgan’s cards became such a hit that Make-A-Wish started to sell them on their website and people from across the country started buying her cards. Morgan’s cards raised $10,000 in just a couple of months. “The fact that such a small girl can touch so many lives has been an inspiration to us all,” says Emily Maresca with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Dakota. The cards are still available today and can be ordered through www.ndwish.org/morgan

Seeing Morgan’s passion for helping others beat cancer inspired Angela to begin another fundraising effort of her own—this time organizing a team for Relay for Life, a cancer awareness event. She named them ‘Pookie’s Patriots,’ after her daughter’s nickname. Angela says it was an emotional night because it fell over Morgan’s 8th birthday and she knew it would be Morgan’s last.

“I will never forget the sound of Morgan’s voice as she stated her name in the microphone during the survivor lap at the kick-off of the Relay that night,” says Lisa. “Then, during her little birthday celebration, she sang us some Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton and told a few jokes. She had us laughing and crying for quite some time.”

That night, Angela’s team raised roughly $16,000 for Relay for Life.

A week later, Morgan passed away. Although the family knew it was coming, they took solace in knowing that Morgan fought until the end. “The biggest thing I noticed was that while cancer may have taken her life, cancer never beat Morgan,” says Joe.

And in spite of her unfathomable grief, Angela became more determined than ever to help fulfill Morgan’s final wish of helping families fight cancer. Her friends say they admire Angela’s tenacity to not let another parent go through what she did. “As a woman who lost her own mother to cancer and now a daughter, Angela is fighting back,” says good friend Lisa. “She is reaching out to make people aware of the disease that is all too common in our society.”

In the fourteen months since Morgan passed away, Angela has thrust herself into more fundraising opportunities. “Now that Morgan has passed, I think Angela’s priority is to give back to all the people and organizations that helped them when Morgan was sick,” says Kayla Foltz, wish granter with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Dakota. “She says learning more about pediatric cancers really motivated her to want to raise awareness about the diseases.”

Angela, her family and friends, Morgan’s teachers and many others from Davenport continue to sell Morgan’s cards. Thousands of prints later, more than $21,000 has been donated to Make-A-Wish on Morgan’s behalf. Angela also participates in Make-A-Wish galas as a featured speaker and takes part in walking events. She also resurrected Pookie’s Patriots this year with a mission to come back stronger than ever. Besides walking in the Relay for Life, Angela and her teammates decided to make and sell a cookbook. “I remember thinking, ‘How hard can it be, it’s a cookbook, right?’,” Angela says laughing. “Can you tell I’ve never done one before?” Although it was completed two months behind schedule, the 300+ page cookbook [with Morgan’s cards as the dividers] was a huge success. The cookbooks along with Joe’s 1st Annual Running for the Ribbons 5K in Kindred, a soup and sandwich feed, spaghetti feed and various other fundraisers, allowed Pookie’s Patriots to raise more than $26,000 this year. All of it goes to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life.

“Angela has undergone a situation in her life that most of us couldn’t even imagine,” says Lisa. “She has taken the loss of her daughter and used it as a life lesson to live, laugh and love—a motto she and Morgan cherished.”

Indeed, it is Angela’s determination to push through her pain that has helped her grieve her daughter’s loss and, in the process, help keep her family together. “Do I want to stay home and cry?,” she asks. “Yes, sure, but it’s not going to change anything. When you have a husband and son who still mean the world to you, why would you want to lose two more people because you’ve lost someone you care about? You don’t know how strong you are until strong is your only option,” shares Angela.

If there is one thing Angela has learned from Morgan’s experience, Joe says it’s that life is too short to wait to enjoy it or to not follow your dreams. This Fall Angela will be following one of her dreams when she goes back to college to pursue a degree in nursing.

“I have always thought about nursing, but never knew if I would be good at it,” Angela says. “I still don’t know that, but I know that the nurses we dealt with daily were a rock for me. I think having been through this journey I can be that rock for somebody else and take care of patients very well. I know that I will be a great nurse ONE day.”

With the support of the two men in her life, Angela is ready to embrace each new day. “I do want to say that our family is stronger than it’s ever been. I’ve found a new love for my husband,” Angela says. “I know I can lean on him for anything.” Losing Morgan has changed the way Angela says she raises Andrew. “I know now that tomorrow isn’t promised. If Andrew wants to do something, we try to do it [within reason],” she says. “I want Andrew to grow up with good memories and I refuse to put him in a bubble.”

Angela says she carries memories of her daughter with her everywhere she goes. You can see it on that tattoo around her ankle. It’s a reminder to live life the way Morgan wanted to live hers. “I know Morgan would want us out trying to help others and still being happy, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves,” Angela says. “You just have to believe that one day you’ll all be together.”