‘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.