Joslin was born in between snowstorms,
on January 23, 1979, in Worthington,MN.
She attended school in Sibley,Iowa and
graduated from Sibley-Ocheyedan High School
in 1997. She was our little party girl...
always loving to celebrate and decorate.
I remember seeing her out in the cold and snow
on her crutches, with just one leg, decorating
the fenceline along our acreage with lights for
the Holidays. She also loved decorating the
Christmas tree, and very much enjoyed wrapping
presents with beautiful paper and handmade bows.
While in school, Joslin was very active,
participating in sports, choir and band.
She especially enjoyed being a co-editor and
photographer for the school yearbook. She had
an adventurous side to her, as shown in learning
how to fly a small airplane during a May Term class.
She had a delightful sense of humor, and kept
it most of the time, even when she was struggling
with nurses who didn't understand her care as well
as she did.
While I, Jo, had a photography studio,
Joslin was a big help, especially in her assistance
when I did wedding pictures. She had an eye for detail,
color and design. She had a compassionate heart,
demonstrated by how much she enjoyed being with
children and caring for animals. Once she brought
a small deer home in her arms after finding it
during a walk. She was disappointed we couldn't
keep it. She loved animals,especially cats. She
trained our black lab to stay on a towel on the
floor in our house so he could come in, to keep her
company when she was ill.
Joslin was able to do some traveling.
In 1995, she celebrated her 16th birthday in Ecuador,
South America, while on a family vacation visiting
relatives there. In the summer of 1996, Joslin
traveled by herself to Hungary, to visit a close
friend, Monika, who was a foreign exchange student at
Sibley the year before. On her way home from Hungary,
she stopped in Amsterdam to visit her sister, Jess,
who was attending a semester of school in Leiden.
In July of 1997, shortly after graduating
from high school, Joslin was diagnosed with a rare
cancer called osteogenic sarcoma. She received
treatment at Fairview University Hospital in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. I (Jo) quit my full time job to
take her to the doctor and help care for her.
In October 1997 she had an above-the-knee
amputation because of the tumor in her knee. She
finished her first chemotherapy in May 1998.
The summer of 1998 was spent trying to
regain her strength and work with an artificial leg,
as she made plans to go to college, a year later
than she had originally hoped. She attended
Camp-Mak-A-Dream for kids with cancer, in Missoula,
Montana, making many friends and memories. From
August until October 1998, she attended
Central College at Pella, Iowa, where her older
sister, Jessica was a senior.
In October 1998, it was discovered that
her cancer was again active and she dropped out
of school, and treatment was attempted.
After 3 months, it was clear that the treatment
wasn't working to make the tumors smaller and
she was declared terminal. Further treatment was
to make her more comfortable and try to reduce the
huge amount of pain she was having where the tumor
came back in the stump of her leg. Medical facilities
in Minneapolis, Sioux Falls and Sibley attended to her.
She was the first patient at the Sioux Falls
Medical X-ray to have stereotactic radiation used
for anything other than brain tumors. They were
able to control the tumors forming in her liver,
which gave her more time to live. Hospice of
Osceola County, in Iowa was a big help to us the
last 9 months of Joslin's life, as they came to
our house to give Joslin medical check-ups and even
gave her blood there the last few weeks of her life.
For the last 9 months of her life, Joslin was on a
pain pump which administered Fentanyl, a strong pain
reliever, right into her blood stream. She also had
to use constant oxygen for at least the last 4 months
of her life. As she became more ill and homebound,
Joslin continued to paint, do crafts, write letters
and enjoyed so much her interaction with friends.
She was blessed with many special friends.
She died at home, jumping from her
father's arms to the arms of her Heavenly Father,
and her body was buried on a beautiful
September day. Her funeral was held in the
First Baptist Church, in Sibley, Iowa where
she was a member. Our family continues to miss
her and will be incomplete until
we are reunited in heaven someday.
She was a blessing for the 20 years we were
privileged to have her here on earth.