‘Blown away’: Spokane Valley church raising money to help pay off millions in medical debt
By Greg Mason, The Spokesman-Review
Published: December 30, 2020, 8:52am
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SPOKANE — Fifteen-year-old Kristal Nieland was going into her sophomore year of high school when she was diagnosed with leukemia.
Nieland spent nearly two years in and out of hospitals for treatments — still somehow finding the strength to attend her senior prom along the way, said her mother, Shirley Carroll. She was 16 when she died in June 1987.
Carroll, a single mother trying to run her own business, not only had to contend with her daughter’s death, but roughly $80,000 in medical bills after insurance. She said she made payments during and after Kristal’s treatments.