Earlier this week, Nicole Wheatley was on the phone talking about her daughter Hayden’s recent fight against cancer. While talking, she was interrupted by her two girls fighting in the background.

“It’s a good thing my kids are fighting because that means they’re feeling good,” she said. “I try to be thankful for that.”

She resumes the conversation in which she reflects on the year 2015. That was a hard one for her family.

That April, University of Iowa doctors found a tumor on 19-month-old Hayden’s brainstem. Surgeons removed it successfully, but her troubles didn’t stop there. Doctors also found fluid on her lungs, and she went on life-support for 36 hours. Not long after, testing from the previously removed tumor confirmed it was cancer.

Hayden went through 33 sessions of radiation and four rounds of chemotherapy.

The news affected the family in various ways.

Hayden’s older sister, Adelyn, learned about cancer, death, and sickness at the age of 4. When she sometimes visited Hayden in the hospital, she saw her hooked up to various machines. The image left an impression on her, as she recreates the scene when she draws pictures of her little sister.

Hayden’s father, Eric, often stayed home with their pet dog while Nicole stayed with Hayden in Iowa City at the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital for long durations of time.

Times got harder when Eric had to put the dog down because it, too, was battling cancer.

“It was a trying time for all of us,” Eric said. “[I kept thinking], ‘I wish 2015 would get over with because I am so over it.’ ”

Good news came in mid-December 2016: Hayden was confirmed to be in remission.

And this week, 3-year-old Hayden is the honorary Kid Captain for the Iowa football team’s game at Northwestern this weekend.

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Hayden had a stroke during her previous time on ECNO, a life-support machine. Effects from the stroke set her back today. Nicole said she walks with a little limp, and her speech is good but a little hard to understand.

She has physical therapy twice a week and speech therapy once a week. She just completed occupational and developmental therapies because she doesn’t qualify for those anymore. But she still travels to Iowa City for an MRI scan every three months.

The previous stroke also caused her eyes to cross, and she had correctional surgery to help that. Her vision is great, though, Nicole said.

“She can count and does some of her ABCs,” Eric said. “She can work an iPad better than I can. It’s amazing … She’s pretty close to exactly as a normal — whatever that means — 3-year-old as you can be, despite all the stuff that has occurred. We’re grateful for that.”

Hayden has defied the odds doctors predicted for her. At one point, doctors told Nicole and Eric to say “whatever they needed to say” to Hayden throughout the hectic few medical days in April 2015.

“They have to let you know the worst-case scenario,” Nicole said. “So I never faulted them for giving us the worst-of-the-worst news because we had to be prepared for that.

“There were times I wished doctors could have been a little more uplifting and a little more encouraging, but looking back, I understand why they weren’t, because it did not look good. And a lot of doctors we dealt with are very surprised to see that she did survive and that she is doing as well as she is.”

Reflecting on their decision to bring Hayden to the ER, both Nicole and Eric agreed their instinct to seek emergency care saved her.

The first sign was Hayden’s sudden inability to walk. Care at a local clinic in their hometown of Hamilton, Illinois, didn’t find anything wrong despite her imbalance, and doctors there suggested she’d get better in time. But both parents agreed she needed extra attention.

They brought her to an ER, where doctors indeed found something wrong — there was fluid on her brain. They rushed Hayden 1.5 hours to the UI Children’s Hospital in an ambulance, and her care was left in UI hands from then on.

“You always hear people say follow your gut, follow your instincts, mother knows best,” Nicole said. “And I don’t know what was about that whole situation … Because she was acting fine. Other than being off-balance, she wasn’t acting sick.”

“I know that I often get the credit for the motherly instinct, but it was almost like he had it, too. He felt strongly enough with me that something was wrong.”

Now, when the two kids argue, often over toys or whoever’s tablet is charged at the time, both parents are thankful.