The Mickaela Foundation has closed as an non-profit organization providing financial assistance, but we will continue to use this site to provide informational resources for ALL cancer patients and uninsured Colorado citizens.

Mickaela's Story

Mickaela was born on November 11th 1959, as the third daughter of Mikki and Ferdinand Earle IV. Growing up in Southern California, she was the middle child of an entire set of 5 sisters. They all shared one bathroom! Mickaela's sense of humor developed at a very early age. Her mother said she was always funny, original and imaginative, from day one.

Mickaela attended Los Angeles Public Schools and immediately established herself as the class clown. She also established herself as the protector of the vulnerable. Her strong will and giving personality helped her to gain respect and admiration from all different types of kids. She never really belonged to a "clique", but was accepted by all of them. She used this influence to shield those who would ordinarily be picked on. She became well known throughout the valley. Pretty amazing considering that each school averaged about 2500 per school. She made it her business to know the friends of all of her sisters, as well as their foes, enemies or rivals. She made friends with all of them, often smoothing out any confrontations. A true peacemaker.

Mickaela did not know what she wanted to be when she attended Chatsworth High School, but she did love to draw, and work with plants, and she was incredibly funny. She even briefly considered a career as a stand up comedian. Below the surface however, she was very shy and unsure of herself. Although she was beautiful and talented, she always thought she was ugly and less important than others. In reality she was tall, pretty, and always had long blonde hair, but she was incredibly humble and genuine.

After graduation in 1977, she moved with her family to Colorado. Mickaela studied nursing and sign language at Community College of Denver, still searching for her destiny. She worked many odd jobs including manufacturing in a fabric company and as a warehouse worker in a tire outlet. Something else special happened in 1977, she met the love of her life. At that time, she and Louis were just really good friends, but by 1980, that changed. Mickaela and Louis began dating. Louis was attending CSU and Mickaela would make regular treks to Fort Collins to spend time with him.

By 1982 Kaela found a job in a the field she loved - Botanical and Horticulture. She worked at Front Range, Paulinos and finally Little Valley Wholesale Nursery. Mickaela had a passion for plants - her entire life. She could identify a plant or a tree by the branches - in the winter - without leaves! At Little Valley, Mickaela greeted the customers with a smile, a spider and a candy. Her constant request for doughnuts was so effective that few weeks went by without a couple of dozens showing up mysteriously. The funny thing was that Kaela didn't really even like doughnuts all that much.

Louis and Kaela bought a house in Westminster and began designing a beautifully landscaped wonderland of botanical festivities. Louis' background also featured a heavy botanical and horticultural flavor. For years he worked at Timberline Gardens during the summers. Mickaela stayed at Little Valley until 1989, when she decided that she needed more. Something called to her to go back to school. Mickaela and her sister attended Denver Institute of Technology where she graduated as an honor student in graphic design. Kaela was hired immediately, after her internship with the US Forest Service, by The Publishing House in Westminster. Not only did she hone her natural ability for design, but she also learned the intricacies of 4-color printing.

Mickaela was hired away from The Publishing House to North Suburban Printing where she became Art Director. She stayed there for 2 years before she and her sister founded their own design company called "SYS" Graphics. Her true love however, (besides Louis), was still botanics, and she began to experiment with painting. Her uncle, Eyvind Earle, was an internationally known artist and had great influence over her technique and fine art instincts. She created beautiful, yet limited quantities of pen and ink illustrations of animals, watercolor painting of plants and flowers and exclusive oils of branches.

Her style was unique and rich. The oils she created are owned by Louis and her family only.

Mickaela was trying to devote more time to her fine art career, but she always made more time to help those in need around her. Like a magnet, she attracted the people in the world who were lost, in despair, or just in need of her special brand of compassion. She spent a lot of time on other people, always making them feel like the most important person in the world - to her each of them were. That was just her way.

Mickaela found a lump in her breast in 1997. She had it checked out several years earlier, but her doctor misdiagnosed it as a simple cyst, upon the lumps persistence and growth, her doctor prescribed a needle aspiration. This is similar to a biopsy, but less invasive. Mickaela reacted to the aspiration immediately and dramatically as the entire right side of her body swelled by later that night.  The emergency room doctor discovered the lump was not a cyst at all, but in fact stage-2 breast cancer. This cancer was extremely aggressive, by the the time Mickaela began her first round of chemotherapy, her diagnosis had been upgraded to borderline stage-3.

Mickaela zipped through her first round of chemotherapy the following Spring and wowed everyone with her remarkable attitude. Initially, the hardest part of the chemo was the loss of her long blonde hair. One of her sisters remarked in the Day of Caring memories book that she had never really seen her face without all that hair framing it - she was gorgeous. Chemo sessions were always a blast with Kaela present. She shared emailed jokes, plastic spiders and funny anecdotes helping to brighten the day of all the other patients. Kaela made many friends, and tried to keep up a sunny exterior. Inside however, Kaela was scared, she knew that she was the exception to the rule when the statistics stated success rates or possible side effects, after all, she always had been a one-in-a-million!

That first round of chemo was a trial program that created a very rare, but scary heart condition. She was forced to drop the program two sessions early, when she was rushed to the emergency room with a heart rate over 214 bps. Her attitude toward chemotherapy and traditional medicine changed at that point. She felt like the chemo and any radiation treatments were poison and were killing her. The combination of smoking, drinking, participating in strenuous activities as if she were healthy,  and her new reluctance toward treatment began to show later that summer. She wanted to be outside and go camping, but she just didn't have the gas - she forced herself.  As Mickaela would have said herself a year before, how you see it will determine the results.

Mickaela continued to keep a positive outlook on the surface, but inside she felt dread and doubt. She had received a clean bill of health and her counts were next to nil in June, but in August 1998, her doctor found a reoccurrence. Kaela's confidence was really shaken at this time. She had expected that she was past breast cancer and had already begun rebuilding her life and career. The doctors recommended immediate and aggressive chemotherapy. Louis and Kaela had planned a trip to Mexico to celebrate the earlier diagnosis. That trip was postponed because the chemo had depleted her immune system - they never got to go to Mexico.

The second and round of chemo had no effect.

During routine testing, the oncologist found that the now solid stage 3 breast cancer has metastasized to her bones in her hips. This development was devastating for Mickaela and Louis. Even as they tried to maintain a very positive attitude, the metastasis also brought a stage-4 classification. This was bad for many reasons: After all that she had been through, there was no progress and she felt she was slipping; Insurance companies do not generally extend much hope for stage-4 patients and won't cover many new and hopeful treatments. Louis fought hard and long to get the insurance to approve the bone marrow/stem cell transplant procedure at MD Andersen in Houston.

MD Andersen is one of the leading cancer research centers in America. So the chances seemed better than average that transplant could save Mickaela (about a 50/50 chance). She wanted no part of this at all. It took much coaxing from her doctors, family and Louis to finally commit six months later than originally proposed. Mickaela and Louis spent four months in Houston. Louis took care of Mickaela everyday. He spent every day with her and stayed at the hospital during the heaviest part of the treatment. He sent daily reports home by email and Kaela's sister posted the updates on a website dedicated to keeping her friends and relatives informed. Mickaela was afraid she would die when they removed all the white cells.

They came home the day after her birthday, November 12th, 1999. The prognosis looked good, she was showing fast progress and her immune system - and hair - began to grow again. By the January checkup in Houston, the outlook still looked good, but the doctors in Houston wanted Mickaela to undergo radiation to "make sure" that everything was gone. Mickaela flatly refused. She had been through enough and she did not feel that the odds of success were worth the possible side effects. By the April checkup, Houston changed their prognosis, they did not get all the bone cancer in the stem cell, radiation was no longer debatable. Mickaela did not want family or friends to worry or to be upset, so she kept this information to herself. She finally agreed to take radiation in July. Again, she was guarded about sharing any bad news with the family, she reported that all was good, and that the radiation therapy was just to relieve the pain of bone cell regeneration.

By October, Mickaela learned that the radiation in fact had not even slowed this unusually aggressive cancer racing through her pelvic region. And more bad news revealed that the cancer had now metastasized to her liver. Mickaela rarely acknowledged that she might die, she was more worried about those around her. She constantly tried to comfort her friends, family and Louis.

Mickaela passed away on Friday, January 12, 2001. An attendee of her memorial service was heard to have said "there are so many people so upset by this". When a person touches so many people in their life, the wake of sorrow that follows their death will be vast. Mickaela's legacy is being expanded to include a foundation that will provide chemotherapy and treatment funds for uninsured cancer patients in her name. Mickaela will continue to help others for many years to come.

Read Kaela's Online Stem Cell Transplant Journal