EL PASO -- Margaret Hussmann isn't like other teenage girls who are driven by new clothes, make-up, meeting boys and talking on the telephone.

She is 15, an athlete who stands 5 feet 11 inches tall, is smart, demands attention and feels comfortable in sweats. No fancy dresses or stockings for her.

She smiles a lot, has big bluish-green eyes and freckles.

And she is dying.

Margaret was told the cancer in her lung and hip could not be controlled anymore.

The news that she would die soon did not break her. Instead, she decided she wanted to see, feel and experience new things before her body could not fight any more.

"I really wanted to go skydiving and my mom said, 'What other fun things do you want to do? Let's make a list,'"she said.

"I've never been skydiving, I've never been to Disneyland, I've never been snowmobiling -- I've never really done any of these. ... We were here making my fun list like at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m."

Margaret has a tumor in her right hip and inside the lower lobe of her right lung. Eventually, she will get an unbearable pain in her hip and it will become increasingly difficult for her to breathe.

Last week, tests revealed the two tumors in her body are resistant to chemotherapy and radiation.

She will have to take a combination of three medications that will starve the tumors and reduce the chances of other tumors growing, which is why doctors are unsure how much time she has.

"It was after a volleyball game in eighth grade. We were at Whataburger with my best friends and my side just started hurting a lot," Margaret said.

The pain "was just like sharp. I couldn't stand up. I was just hunched over."

Margaret, a thin, tall girl, who started playing volleyball when she was in sixth grade, said it was a struggle to even walk.

Her mother, Amy Hussmann, who was with Margaret at the fast food restaurant, said she thought it was just a sprain and tried to talk her daughter out of making a trip to the hospital.

"I said, 'What, do you hurt bad enough to go to the hospital?'

"She said, 'Yeah, I do,' and she never says that. That's when I'm like, OK.

"That was our very first trip -- ever -- to the emergency room," Amy Hussmann said. "She's obviously so tall and I couldn't carry her, so she walked in (the hospital) and lied on the floor."

Margaret was admitted into the hospital and doctors and nurses ran tests on her. The diagnosis: a large tumor had ruptured her left kidney and it was cancer.

The tumor, a Wilms' tumor, is a rare type of kidney cancer found in children that can be genetically passed on from their parents.

For Margaret, the tumor had been passed on from her father, Harry Hussmann, who suffered from a Wilms' tumor when he was 3 years old. His sister, Anne Mitchell, also suffered from a Wilms' tumor when she was 5 years old.

"I really had no idea that it ran in the family. I knew that Anne had cancer, but we didn't know that Wilms' was a familial tumor. We didn't know it was genetic.

"We just thought it was kind of a random thing for her, and for me it was just a birth defect," Harry Hussmann said.

"I was obviously pretty crushed because I didn't know that I had that risk. I didn't know that I could pass that risk on to our children, it never crossed my mind. It was pretty devastating to me for a long time."

Both Harry Hussmann and his sister had the affected kidneys removed and have not experienced any complications since. Margaret's parents thought the same would happen with her.

"We're like, 'OK, six months (of chemotherapy and radiation therapy). We'll kick cancer's a-- and we're moving on,'" Amy Hussmann said.

"She had a CT scan of her chest and her abdomen because, statistically, if a Wilms' does return, that's where it returns."

The CT scans showed no signs of tumors. Margaret went to Franklin High School and played on the volleyball team -- everything was normal, her mother said.

But then, on Valentine's Day, Margaret and her parents received devastating news.

Margaret started feeling pain in her right hip and doctors found a large tumor that was pushing on her joint. She also had more than 50 lesions, which could have possibly turned into tumors, in her lungs.

"We were thinking it was a growing pain, we went and had a lift made for her shoe and took her to a chiropractor," Amy Hussmann said. "We were all so convinced, 'No it can't be cancer, again. She just had a clean CT scan.' But it was so big, there's actually a hairline fracture in her bone. That's when we knew we had to hit it with the big guns."

Margaret received chemotherapy and radiation therapy and got two stem-cell replacements at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The treatment, Margaret said, did not hurt but it caused sores in her mouth, esophagus, stomach and bladder. She also lost all her hair.

"It didn't really hurt, it just made me feel bad. The side effects are what causes the pain, the throwing up," she said. "The worst was when I had pain in my bladder, that was like the worst."

Family, friends help

Margaret's battle is not being fought alone. Her family and friends have rallied around her to help her fight the cancer.

In March, her friend's mother, Lorena Kaiser, came up with an idea to make bracelets, similar to the yellow Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" bracelets.

Her bracelets are orange -- Margaret's favorite color -- with the saying "Twice as Strong" and a logo of a hand depicting a musician's rock 'n' roll sign.

The bracelet has the rock 'n' roll hand sign because Margaret said, "I always joke that I'm a rock star."

Even though Margaret is currently being home-schooled, her friends at Franklin High School wear the bracelets to show their support.

Her two best friends, Becca Brady, 15, and Alezandra Martinez, 16, have been with her the whole way.

When Margaret got home from Houston after being at M.D. Anderson this summer, Brady and Martinez helped her paint her room orange with splatters of different colors on the walls.

Margaret's friends visited her often, as long as they weren't sick because her immune system was weak from the cancer treatments. Her friends and family became conscientious about washing their hands so they wouldn't spread germs that could make her sick.

Harry Hussmann said while he and his wife were in Houston with Margaret, her older brother, Robert Hussmann, 17, and Margaret's twin brother, Calder Hussmann, 15, stepped up to the plate. They bought groceries, ran errands for their parents and took the two family chocolate Labrador retrievers, Bubba and Dora, to their vet appointments.

Last week, the Hussmann family thought they were reaching the end to Margaret's cancer -- the more than 50 lesions cleared, the tumor in her hip was dead and she was finally going to stop treatment.

But the family was hit with shocking news.

Doctors, again, found another 5-centimeter tumor in her right hip and a 1-centimeter tumor in the lower lobe of her right lung. The tumors are chemotherapy and radiation therapy resistant.

"Well you just go, 'Damn, you know. We gave it the big guns. So what now?' We're not defeatists, we're like 'OK, what now?' " Amy Hussmann asked.

Harry Hussmann said, "I kind of felt like we had been in the tunnel for two years and kind of put everything on hold and we were seeing light at the end of the tunnel. But then all of a sudden, we realized there's a train coming from the other way when they told us."

Margaret's doctor told her and her parents that she had the option of returning to M.D. Anderson to undergo a phase-1 clinical trial or she could take a combination of three different medications that starve the two tumors in her lung and hip, and reduce the chances of another one growing.

Margaret, whose sandy-blond hair has already started to grow back, said she would not leave her friends again and she wanted to go to school.

"She said, 'I'm not leaving my friends. ... Going to school and being with my friends is my top priority,' " Amy Hussmann said. She said her daughter asked the doctor, "Can I take these drugs and still go to school."

"He said, 'Absolutely,'" Margaret said in an accent imitating her doctor and giggled.

It was after this meeting, when Margaret, whose strength humbles adults, began her journey to accomplish, see, feel, touch and experience new things -- not what most other girls her age are driven by.

Margaret's following weeks are planned out and scheduled with things she has written down on her "fun list."

The list ranges from getting a henna tattoo to baking cookies with her mother to riding in a helicopter and going to New York. But some things on the list had to be crossed off, such as going to an NFL game, because she doesn't have enough time.

With each wish that's crossed off the list, her family feels mixed emotions. It's a time of sadness and happiness, strength and weakness and a little anger.

For Margaret, each day is just another day she gets to be herself.