Trevor Kling

Trevor was the type of kid that could light a room with his smile. No matter what happened in his father, David’s day, as soon as he got home, Trevor would change everything. He would run up to him with that ear-to-ear smile and all the bad in his day would disappear.

Trevor and his sister Maddy were incredibly close, the love those two shared was incomparable. They always leaned on each other and helped each other through their good and bad.

When people think about Trevor, we hope they will smile as he did, and laugh in remembering him. Trevor had the funniest fashion sense you could imagine, you would never be able to predict what he would come out of his room wearing. He had an exorbitant collection of ridiculous and weird socks and he absolutely loved wearing them.

Back in 2015, Trevor was a normal 11-year-old boy. He was a competitive baseball player and a competitive bowler. During the summer, as he was playing catcher for his team, he started getting migraines and throwing up during his games. Initially, they said that he was dehydrated. We went to the ER and gave Trevor liquids, but even after hydrating, the same symptoms continued. The doctors then thought his symptoms could be from a concussion he got while he was playing baseball.

We kept him out of everything for the rest of the summer. His migraines stopped, but then one morning, as Trevor was eating his cereal, he looked over at his Mom and told her that he forgot how to chew and the cereal was just falling out of his mouth. She immediately contacted his doctor and they told us to take Trevor straight to the ER for an MRI. Later in the afternoon, we learned that Trevor had a major tumor on the right side of his brain.

A week later, Trevor had a biopsy of his brain to determine what type of tumor he had. It turned out to be an Anaplastic Astrocytoma — a very common tumor in adults, but extremely rare in children. This came with the information that there was a 5-10% chance of survival.

Trevor went through an 8-hour brain surgery to remove whatever they could of the tumor. As a result, he lost 25% of his left side body movement. He went through PT and then started on chemo and radiation therapy beginning on his 12th birthday.

During all of this, Trevor continued to practice with his baseball team and bowled competitively. He actually qualified for a national tournament that year, for the first time. He also bowled in the Junior Gold tourney in Indy, even though he was going through chemo and had no strength to bowl. After the tournament, Trevor received the Sportsmanship Award from that National tournament.

Several months later, we learned that the tumor had stopped growing and was no longer in his brain. In November of 2016, Trevor was diagnosed NED (No Evidence of Disease). He started playing ball and leading a “normal” life again. Everything was going great until an evening in March, when Trevor started having seizures again. We rushed him to Children’s Hospital Colorado for another MRI and learned the tumor had begun growing again. This time, there was no cure. We had to tell Trevor that he was going to die.

When we had that hard conversation with Dr. Bob Casey and our child at Children’s, we asked Trevor what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. His answer would surprise most people. He wanted to go to high school and go to a dance there. This boy had a ticket to do anything he wanted and he chose to attend high school.

He also decided he would participate in a clinical trial chemotherapy. He knew it would not help him, and most likely would make his life a living hell, but when we asked Trevor why he wanted to do it, his response was; “I want to take this chemo because it won’t help me, but it might help someone else later.”

It was determined that the trial was not helping; it was only a matter of a few months, before Trevor passed on October 4, 2017.

After Trevor passed, International Magazine, Bowler Journal, named him “THE PERSON OF THE YEAR” for the way he presented himself. They honored him because what he went through united the Bowling Community as one, and his courage throughout. children that have battled and will battle any form of cancer in the future.