If you asked Margo Brown what she wanted to be when she grew up, you would get creative answers.
Her parents knew if anyone could find a way to be a mermaid-astronaut-face painter, she would be the one to do it.
“My mom jokes that she was born with tennis shoes on,” Joe Brown, Margo’s dad, said. “She was a little bonkers when she was little, but it has grown into a great strength. She was always running, always so strong and so positive.”
As she grew older, Margo continued to develop her passions and talents. She teamed up with her older sister, Liliana, creating costumes and characters for movies and video projects at home, shared a love of the outdoors with her dad and stepped in when her friends got picked on at school.
“I am someone who tries to put other people’s needs first,” Margo said. “I like having something I’m passionate about.”
As she entered seventh grade in 2025, Margo and her family found out one of those passions involved running. She decided to try track and field with a goal to learn how to pole vault.
“We were at a track meet with terrible weather, and a lot of the schools didn’t come, so kids could compete in any event,” her mom, Amanda, said. “Margo decided to do the 100-yard dash, and when the gun went off, I saw her struggle a little. Margo is fast and strong, and she still got third, but I could tell something was off.”
A few weeks later, the whole family caught an illness. Margo was the last to kick it and spent a lot of time sitting around fatigued. Amanda noticed that was out of character and took her to the pediatrician.
The first tests were not conclusive, so her pediatrician referred her to MU Health Care’s Children’s Hospital for additional blood work. Margo and her parents were in the grocery store when they got a phone call from Kim Ebersol, PNP, asking them to come back to the hospital.
“Kim told us it was definitely leukemia, and they knew what kind it was, but they wanted to do genetic tests to determine how they were going to treat it,” Amanda said. “We left our cart there and were at the hospital in 10 minutes, and treatment started just like that.”
Margo’s doctors, pediatric hematologists and oncologists Altaf Jamil, MD, and Tyler Severance, MD, told the Browns that she had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or B-ALL. This cancer starts in your bone marrow and affects developing white blood cells, called blasts, turning them cancerous before they can become a part of your immune system.
“When I first heard the word ‘leukemia,’ it was like the whole world around me was falling in with this sense of knowing everything was going to change,” Margo said. “We know families who have lost kids to cancer, and I thought, ‘Am I going to die?’”
Thankfully, B-ALL is treatable cancer, particularly when it’s caught early. And because MU Health Care is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group, pediatric cancer experts here use the same evidence-based treatments and clinical trials to treat cancer in children and young adults found in other top hospitals around the world.
“As a parent, it’s critical to have a good relationship with your child’s primary care provider,” Severance said. “Symptoms of pediatric cancer — weight loss, fever, fatigue, bone pain — can also happen because of much less serious illness. Margo and her parents didn’t need to know the signs of leukemia, but they went to her pediatrician, and that bridge to our hospital is the most important dynamic in diagnosing pediatric cancer early and getting patients on the road to recovery.”
Margo started inpatient chemotherapy right away. Access to care so close to home in Ashland, Missouri, meant the rest of her family kept their jobs and didn’t face the disruption of long days on the road. Instead, they focused on spending time together in their established community. The Browns were together constantly, talking, crying, watching movies and finding ways to adapt to her diagnosis and treatment.
“The moment it became real for me was in the car. Margo was texting her friend, and she asked me how to spell leukemia,” Amanda said. “We had to learn how to spell leukemia, and we had to know and learn to spell lots of terms in the beginning. Those first two days can feel hopeless, but we had a lot of support.”
One of those supports was therapy Duo Dog Link, who visited and laid in bed with Margo when she was too tired to play. The Child Life team and hospital psychiatrist helped the Browns prepare to support Margo while she was in the hospital.
“We always felt cared for and loved by our care team everywhere, from our oncologists, the nurses, the nutritionist and the housekeepers, all the way down to Link,” Amanda said. “Everyone knew Margo's name, knew her story. It was such a comfort that even though we were in the worst of situations, we really felt like we were getting the best care and that helped immensely.”
Margo’s cancer testing revealed her B-ALL was positive for a cell marker called CD-19. After she finished her initial rounds of chemotherapy (a treatment phase called induction), Margo’s doctors were able to start her on a drug called blinatumomab, with the goal of improving her immune system’s ability to find and kill the cancer.
“Margo received state-of-the-art, front-line care,” Severance said. “We are fortunate here that our diagnostic team can, within hours, diagnose acute leukemia and tell us the strengths and weaknesses of a patient’s cancer. Where we are now reflects how MU Health Care and our community has invested in pediatric cancer care.”
Blinatumomab is delivered through constant infusion from a special portable pump, which allows kids with cancer to live life outside of the hospital while receiving treatment. MU Health Care’s pumps were a gift from the GP M.A.D.E. foundation and have helped kids at MU Health Care, including Margo, achieve remission.
“Hearing that she was in remission allowed her family to switch their mindset and press onward,” Severance said. “It was a big change when they redefined their goals and started planning family trips and other fun things.”
Margo lost her hair during treatment, which will continue for the next two years to make sure she is cancer-free. One day, after her parents had shaved their heads to match hers, she opened a prize box toy in the clinic and found hair scrunchies.
“Everything in the prize box is donated, but there weren’t a lot of gifts for older kids or teens,” Margo said. “So, I said, ‘This gives us something to do.’ In that moment, I decided to make teen carts, and I posted about it on social media. The community donated money, beauty products, sports things, board games, books, blind boxes, stickers and art supplies for older kids.”
As she prepares to enter high school, Margo is close to feeling like her old self again. Her energy has returned, and she is looking forward to tackling the pole vault and continuing to stock the teen carts in the hospital.
“To get all of Margo’s care in Columbia was a life-changing blessing for us,” Joe said. “The people at MU Health Care saved our child's life. They will forever be family to us. And it’s exciting, because now that she’s feeling better, we are still finding out what a more healthy version of Margo can do.”