“She’s just a fireplug, an absolute force of nature. Fiercely independent.”
Jim Hough can’t help but grin as 5-year-old Jocelin runs and jumps, playing with her sisters and trying on a perfectly fitted, size super-small wedding dress.
Her parents Jim and Amanda Hough are breathing a bit easier this afternoon, one nestled between their regular trips to Seattle for Jocelin’s treatments and three months removed from receiving news that their middle daughter has cancer.
Jocelin, or Joss for short, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in mid-February.
Turns out that fireplug was good at something she could hardly know was so lethal: producing cancer cells.
“I think cancer is terrible — it’s a special form of terrible — but it’s done nothing to our marriage,” Amanda says. “It anything, it’s made us stronger.”
Just six months removed from their home in Walla Walla, the Houghs found strength in each other and, to their surprise, a new family of supporters from Blyn to Sequim and Port Angeles and beyond.
“I am the luckiest guy on Earth — I feel like everything happened for a reason,” Jim says.
After a month of treatments, Jocelin’s cancer is now in remission, but she still needs chemotherapy every 10 days to make sure any last little bit of cancer is eliminated.
“She can go to school, she can run and jump and play,” Amanda says.
Apart from the occasional bout of nausea, Joss is a typical 5-year-old, her mom says.
“She’s just a normal kid,” Amanda says. “She’s just got a tube in her face.”
New home, new challenges
Jim and Amanda Hough were both born and raised in Walla Walla and it wasn’t until a job opening late last year for an IT (information technology) manager at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s 7 Cedars Casino that encouraged the couple to move.
“One of our first conversations was, I didn’t want to ever move unless I could fly home at the drop of a hat,” Amanda recalls.
In late October, Jim started in his position.
Christmastime was the last time the Houghs recall Jocelin feeling well.
By the end of January, everyone in the Hough house — Jim and Amanda, Joss and her sisters Lilly (now 8) and Kahlan 4 — was sick.
“Joss never really got better,” Jim says. “My thought was she had a cold and then she got the flu because her immune system was down.”
After several days of seeing her malaise, Jim and Amanda took her to doctors and a consultation with a pediatrician, who encouraged the couple to take an anemic and listless Jocelin to Olympic Medical Center after noting the youngster was holding on to a fever.
There, on Feb. 15, the Houghs got a shock.
“The doctor saw her for a minute and then ordered some blood tests,” Jim recalls. “The thing I most distinctly remember was I got thirsty and went for a drink of water and when I came back I saw the doctor leaning against the wall. He said, ‘It’s one of three things and they’re all serious.’ He didn’t sugar-coat it, which I appreciate.”
That conversation turned into an ambulance ride to Seattle, where doctors looked to stabilize the youngster. The Houghs recalls two rather scary numbers from that day: 199, Joss’ recorded heart rate (180 at rest), and eight, Jocelin’s recorded level of hematocrit — the proportion of your total blood volume that is composed of red blood cells; normal levels vary but most adult women vary between 35-44.5, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Doctors say she was pretty close to having a heart attack,” Jim says.
Going through his mind at the time: “This roller coaster sucks. We want off.”
Three days later, Jocelin received her diagnosis.
Jim, who had experienced a life-changing shock when as a youth he was told his father had died in a car wreck, recalls the moment it was confirmed.
“It changes everything in our life in three words: ‘She has cancer.’ The next 40 years of our life, totally different,” Jim says.
A life-changer
Simply, cancer starts when cells in the body begin to grow out of control. Cells in almost any part of one’s body can become cancer and spread to other areas of the body.
Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), also known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, is cancer that starts from an early version of white blood cells called lymphocytes in the bone marrow — the soft, inner part of the bones where new blood cells are made.
Leukemia cells are particularly insidious, invading the blood quickly and spreading to other parts of the body like the lymph nodes, liver, spleen, brain and spinal cord.
“It just slowly robs your body of everything,” Jim says.
Jocelin was found with a particularly threatening form of leukemia. “Acute” means that the cancer she has can progress quickly and if not treated, could have been within a few months.
The Houghs’ fear for their daughter’s health was compounded by feeling far from home and not being sure of how they would pay for her treatments.
“Our worst fears were realized,” Amanda says, “and we didn’t know anybody here.”
But the couple made two decisions not long after confirming Jocelin’s cancer: to not search the Internet about cancer and to not let the diagnosis divide them.
“She’s got it,” Amanda says of Joss’ cancer, “but we’ve got it.”
Support
What followed was a blur of treatments and plenty of time spent in recovery rooms, with the first 14 days in Seattle Children’s Hospital and the next month at the nearby Ronald McDonald House, a facility that provides families with housing while their child receives treatment.
Jim knew the medical bills would come and he had heard stories from families at the Ronald McDonald House about how they were let go after their family member started racking up medical expenses.
“It was within the first six months (of working at the casino), so technically I was on my probationary period,” Jim says. Instead of wavering, he says, co-workers stepped up in a big way, allowing him to work remotely and using a flexible schedule.
“I got a laptop and did some work from there for the first month,” Jim says. “Life, it had to keep going.”
Then a co-worker took up the cause and started a GoFundMe page (see it at www.gofundme.com/houghsbeatcancer).
At first, Jim and Amanda felt awkward about the fundraiser.
“You feel terrible asking for money,” Jim says.
“You want to be able to support your family on your own; it’s embarrassing,” Amanda says.
Their network of friends, families and acquaintances blew past the GoFundMe’s initial target of $20,000 within two days.
“They just formed a net,” Amanda says.
The Houghs’ GoFundMe funds are now up to almost $25,000 as of this week, with a new goal of $30,000.
Members of the Port Angeles Fire Department stepped up with donations and made their March Seattle Stair Climb in honor of Joss.
“Our faith in humanity on this peninsula … I don’t think I’ve had to pay for a meal,” Amanda says. “It feels like home. It’s nice to know people are thinking about your kid, praying sending good thoughts.”
Several area businesses also set out collection jars to help Jocelin and the Houghs.
With many medical bills still in paperwork process, much of the GoFundMe dollars go to travel and hotel expenses during Jocelin’s once-every-10-day chemotherapy treatments and other unexpected incidentals such as paying for a water delivery service (Jocelin can’t drink well water).
“We have peace of mind because of perfect strangers,” Amanda says. “All they want to do (is have) a job. People don’t have anything and they’ll donate $5, $10 — and that’s everything.”
The new normal
The first month of treatments, Jim says, was an attempt to kill all of the cancer cells in Jocelin’s body.
While doctors found no cancer cells present after the first month, Jim says Joss’ “roadmap” is set for the next two years: treatment every 10 days until July, two months of intensive treatment (hopefully, Jim says, back at the Ronald McDonald House) and after that, if signs are good, longer stretches of time between treatments.
In five years, the Houghs say, Jocelin could conceivably be living cancer-free. Until then, the only prescription beyond chemotherapy is that Jocelin needs to be within an hour of a hospital.
Instead of living what Jim calls a “weird hospital life,” the couple is back in Sequim in their home near Sequim Bay’s Washington Harbor. Jocelin and her sister are in preschool, and older sister Lilly attends Helen Haller Elementary School.
“We try to make everything as fun as possible,” Jim says. That includes hanging out the at the Irrigation Festival carnival, biking, visiting beaches and a particular favorite: seeing the Rocktopus statue at the Port Angeles waterfront.
“We learned when she’s not feeling well to take it five minutes at a time,” Amanda says.
“We’re getting to a ‘new normal,’” Amanda says. “It’s not fun, but it’s manageable. I don’t want to expose her to too much … but she’s also a kid. Who knows if we’re doing it right.”
Reach Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.
