She grew up in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver. Her interest in music as a child began with piano lessons and later evolved into sampling other instruments. First there was the trumpet in the elementary school band and by the age of 13 she had dusted off my old acoustic guitar and was learning to play it on her own despite the fact that it was a regular right-handed guitar and she was left-handed. She learned to play guitar "upside-down" and along with her more advanced piano skills began singing popular tunes along the way.

Angie's vocal abilities, guitar skills, and piano playing improved together in early adolescence and she soon added song-writing to the mix. Birthdays and Christmas were celebrated with new electric and bass guitars, an electric keyboard, an even a full drum kit. After school, weekends and school holidays were primarily spent developing her repertoire of music skills. Throughout her childhood there was also video production, doodling, comic-book style and humourous (award-winning) story-writing, along with other more typical interests for a girl like hip-hop dancing. But as Angie made her way through those difficult early teen-aged years her focus on music intensified to the point that I could see that it would be the principal element in her life as a young adult.

One day, when Angie was 15, I arrived home late one Saturday afternoon and was greeted to an announcement by Angie that she had been working on a song all afternoon and that she had just finished it. She played (guitar) and sang it for me. It was a simple but beautifully written lullaby-sounding ballad she entitled "Home". She combined her sweet adolescent voice with a gentle Celtic lilt along with a soothing melodic pattern that she plucked ever so gently on the guitar. I will never forget that moment. The song touched me and I immediately knew that Angie had a very special talent.

Angie continued writing songs using both the piano and the acoustic guitar and recorded dozens of melodies in various stages of development. I bought her a Boss digital recorder for her 16th birthday because she had been using the audio of our digital camcorder to record her combined vocal and guitar or piano sessions up until then. She still preferred to both play and sing (in a single track) during her recordings using the Boss recorder. She also enjoyed using an ancient cassette recorder that my father (her grandfather) used to record himself with singing Polish folk songs.

As with other teenagers obsessed with their own musical and artistic pursuits, Angie spent more and more time alone instead of socializing with her peers. Angie was extremely intelligent but had always shown signs of social awkwardness even as a young child so her musical focus was partly a function of her self-limiting social network. Music allowed her to cope in a world of seemingly intense if not confusing social and familial relationships. I'm quite sure that Angie wasn't autistic in any clinical sense but her social difficulties were always a concern for me as her father. Schoolmates and other kids often didn't seem to share her enthusiasm for whatever activity she had planned or any topic she wished to discuss. She found herself having to try too hard to gain the attention of her peers and to develop a lasting friendship. I moved her to a different elementary school a couple of months into grade six after serious issues developed among the girls within her class. The new school environment (montessori) was a significant improvement for her and later in grade 8 she attended a specialized high school program for academically oriented if not somewhat gifted children. Her high school, (The Inter-A Program) combined multi-age, self-directed and coopertive learning approaches within the context of a more socially tolerant and globally aware school atmosphere. Angie enjoyed going there.

After finishing grade 10, Angie started having pain above her right knee during the summer of 2007. Several visits to the doctor lead to a couple of different but normal looking x-rays. At the start of September, with pain starting to become a major concern, I arranged an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon along with an MRI of the knee. In early October we met with the specialist and even though there was considerable pain, obvious inflamation and swelling well above the knee he determined that Angie's knee itself was the issue and scheduled Angie for arthroscopic knee surgery which he performed 10 days later without the benefit of an MRI.

The surgeon said the knee had only very minor wear but that he cleaned it up. Angie's recovery never progressed. Her leg pain and swelling worsened and she started getting pain in her back as well. We finally had the previously scheduled MRI at the start of December and got the news.

Angie had a large tumour on her femur well above the knee. Further tests at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver over the next few days would reveal even more tragic news. The malignant cancer had already spread to her spine, hip, tibia (below the knee) and lungs. The arthroscopic venture into her knee may have contributed to the spread of cancer along with the associated delay in obtaining a proper diagnosis through a timely MRI. The prognosis was extremely grave and although it would be several weeks before a diagnosis of osteosarcoma (bone cancer, same as Terry Fox) would be confirmed, the 5-year survival rate for this type of cancer with this level of metastases was less than 20%.

Chemotherapy for Christmas was only the beginning. The chemo would create swelling around the secondary spinal tumour (at T10) causing lower body paralysis. Numerous trips to Vancouver General for targeted radiation to save her from permanent paralysis resulted in painful esophageal radiation burns and skin surface burns. The damaged esophagus meant that she could no longer eat or maintain stomach contents without excruciating, unmanageable pain and was kept alive being fed intravenously (parenterally) for several weeks.

Angie spent 7 consecutive months in hospital. In that time she had her right leg amputated, underwent several rounds of very high-dose chemotherapy, radiation therapy, was effectively paraplegic for 3 months. Her final round of chemotherapy nearly killed her (sepsis) and so her treatments were stopped prematurely. I brought her back home at the start of the summer with modest hope for some recovery but within a few weeks she noticed a lump on her scalp developing along with increasing hip pain and so it was time for more chemotherapy and radiation by mid-September, but this time at our local hospital.

Further treatments over the fall of 2008 and the first few months of 2009 would include chemotherapies, radiation, Vitamin C infusions, Zoladronic acid infusions, blood platelet infusions, etc, etc. All of the treatments were meant to alleviate side-effects, to possibly extend her life, or to help control pain. Some were experimental. None would be life-saving.

Angie was confined to a wheelchair during the last 19 months of her life and she was never strong enough to use her prosthetic leg that she was fitted with soon after being released from BC Children's hospital. As a 17 year old female amputee with cancer who used to hip-hip dance competively the degree of sorrow she was dealing with was unimaginable for the rest of us.

MySpace was the leading social network back in 2007-2008 and Angie had posted some of her music just weeks before the cancer diagnosis. Her on-line following was pretty substancial after word of her illness spread but it wasn't until someone at MySpace noticed her blog about her "Journey with Cancer" in September 2008 that her following really grew. MySpace made her international "Blogger of the Week" the next month and she began receiving words of encouragement and even musical offers from all over the world. Her blog entries were read by thousands and her songs even topped MySpace Canada's folk/indie lists for a while. There were hundreds of emails for many months thereafter and many of them were sad stories of cancer battles lost. Angie found it very difficult to respond to many of the messages. So many people were simply "praying for" her and that, unfortunately, was a constant reminder of just how perilous her situation was.

Facing likely death as a teenager along with the overwhelming day-to-day challenges of a struggling cancer patient made it very hard for her to maintain the facade of courage everyone seemed to expect. But on-line conversations were often encouraging because her prognosis wasn't usually discussed. She got to know several amputees and osteosarcoma survivors over the internet and that helped because she was losing contact with her school friends as months of extreme fatigue and pain management dragged on.

Angie was able to take the family along on a one week cruise to the Caribbean as her Make-A-Wish choice in May of 2009. She was in a lot of pain at times but overall enjoyed the holiday. A few weeks later she managed to make it to her high school graduation ceremonies. Her school administrators produced a provincial diploma even though Angie had been far too sick over the previous 18 months to complete the necessary credits required for graduation. It was particularly heart-breaking for me to hear Angie apologize to us for not getting any post-secondary scholarships like her peers. There she was crying about "letting us down" when we couldn't even properly manage the pain of the spreading cancer for her.

Angie died on July 11th, 2009 peacefully at home as the sun was setting on a warm summer night. There was an incredibly huge "murder" of crows in the towering fir trees of our backyard bidding her farewell (cawing) moments after she took her last breath. A year earlier she had befriended a crow who had regularly stood watch outside on her hospital window ledge. She even wrote a song to honour him.

I will always be grateful for the precious times shared with Angie, whether they were happy moments together on a hot day in the backyard inflatable pool when she was a toddler or on the ski hill with her younger sister Julia when she was a teenager. As her father and advocate, those very difficult times battling cancer can never be forgotten, but with each passing year since her death it is a little easier to reflect more on the good times shared and the positive memories.

I hope that for those of you who have taken the time to read this rather long biography there will be something inspirational in Angie's story. Perhaps simply knowing that a teenager's simple musical contribution can live on even after she's been unfairly taken away. Or perhaps remembering that life is both incredibly fragile and precious.

I will continue to maintain Angie's MySpace profile for as long as there is a MySpace and I will respond to people who have acquainted themselves with Angie and contact me for one reason or another. I hope that all of you with children will take the time to reflect on what really matters in life and strive to share all of the joy that normally accompanies childhood and family life.

Angie's music cannot be downloaded here but I have occasionally provided multiple copies of her CD "Angiescloud" that I produced after her death to individuals and organisations looking to raise money for various causes. Feel free to contact me if you would like access to her music.

Angie, while battling cancer, along with her schoolmates and teachers, both before and after her death, have raised about $30,000 in her name. The main beneficiaries of music sales, concert receipts, head shaving fundraisers and running events have been Balding For Dollars (a local BC Children's Hospital charity), The Terry Fox Foundation, Make-A-Wish, the Inter-A Society.

Angie's father,

Rob Pirog