A beacon of hope: family of Wellsburg Daze grand marshal shares inspiring story

Like most new parents, Addison and Jaime Riebkes remember all of their daughter McKenna’s firsts: her first words, first time walking and first birthday, to name a few. A cruel twist of fate two years ago left them wrestling with the fact that they could suddenly be forced to begin marking lasts, but McKenna—ever the warrior and most recently, the Grand Marshal of the Wellsburg Daze parade on her fifth birthday—has had other ideas all along.
 
Addison, a Wellsburg native and 2005 AGWSR graduate, noticed that his little girl was experiencing rather perplexing stomach pains around February of 2016, and she would sit up for 45 minutes almost every night unable to get to sleep.
 
After hitting a concrete crack with a shovel that May, she cried uncontrollably while complaining of extreme discomfort, and Addison and Jaime decided that their next call would be to a doctor. A CT scan revealed a giant mass in her abdomen, and she was diagnosed with stage three neuroblastoma.
 
Financially, the timing couldn’t have been worse: Addison, who is now an accountant with the city of Urbandale, was in between jobs while moving from the Twin Cities to Ankeny and dropped his insurance thinking nothing of this magnitude could possibly happen. He couldn’t have been more wrong.  
 
Luckily, Jaime’s employer provided a Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) policy, which allows individuals to temporarily keep health insurance after leaving a job, and the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) removal of pre-existing conditions as a reason for denying coverage was a huge boost to the family. What could’ve been a backbreaker suddenly became feasible.
           
“I was raised to be pretty conservative,” Addison said. “(But) having that way to get on insurance really changed my political views on health care.”
           
McKenna has since undergone two stem cell treatments upon receiving an additional diagnosis of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) and 20 rounds of radiation, but none of it has stopped her from attending preschool, taking swimming lessons and doing the things her parents openly wondered if she’d ever be able to do.
 
“Little by little, she just conquers the next obstacle,” Addison said. 
 
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