DeSales freshman thinks of others while battling cancer

Jocelyn Green’s story will break your heart and warm it, too. If that seems impossible, it makes perfect sense when you learn what the young teen has gone through and what she has handled herself. 

A year and a few weeks after Jocelyn was diagnosed with acute T-cell leukemia/lymphoma, the Columbus St. Francis DeSales High School freshman stood on the field at halftime of a football game against Columbus Bishop Hartley on Friday, Sept. 23 and donated a check for more than $10,000 to Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Despite the horrible illness she had dealt with for the past year, Jocelyn, 14, was giving to others rather receiving sympathy.

Her family accompanied her, and diocesan Superintendent of Schools Adam Dufault, Bishop Earl Fernandes, fellow cheerleaders and many others witnessed her charity. Students from both schools remained silent during the ceremony and then chanted, “We love you, Jocelyn,” in a touching display of support.

“That’s the respect that they showed for her,” said Jocelyn’s mom, Allina.

Jocelyn had qualified to have a wish granted from the Make-A-Wish Foundation due to the severity of her illness. Most kids want to travel or meet a celebrity. She thought about asking to take a trip with her family but said she didn’t feel that requesting something for herself was the right thing to do because her family could take vacations.

“She said, ‘Mom, I just can’t ever imagine sitting on a beach when I could have helped someone else,’” Allina said. “So, I had to call back and say, ‘I’m sorry, she doesn’t want her trip. She would just like to donate it.’”

Instead, Jocelyn thought about the kids on the 11th floor at Nationwide Children’s waiting sometimes for hours to receive outpatient treatments such as blood transfusions and chemotherapy. During the many monotonous hours she has spent there, she noticed that not all of the children and their families have access to technology that could entertain them. And so, Jocelyn donated the electronics and streaming services that would be available to everyone.

In addition to the financial contribution from Make-A-Wish, DeSales’ Golden Hearts service club held fundraising and awareness activities for pediatric cancer in the week leading up to the game. Club members organized Penny Wars during lunch periods, picture-taking opportunities with teachers in crazy costumes for donations and, on game day, a “Golden Out” dress-down with all proceeds going to Jocelyn’s efforts. 

Bishop Hartley also raised money on Jocelyn’s behalf. All told, $10,039 was presented to Nationwide Children’s.    

“We wanted to certainly bring attention to really what I believe is just an unbelievable inspiration,” DeSales principal Dan Garrick said, “and someone who personifies what I believe our school should be about.

“We were playing another Catholic school who I felt very confident that we could partner with them. And not only celebrate Jocelyn’s wonderful story, but also create another great environment for awareness and advocacy.

“Even though we compete fiercely on the athletic field, we share our faith, and we share our mission. And I think all that came together beautifully.

“And I thought Bishop Fernandes captured that at halftime during his comments when he said that when you look at the essence of what Catholic education should be, what we’re witnessing tonight is a true embodiment of that. It’s really faith in action, and that’s what we’re talking to our young people about all the time.”

Discovering the cancer

Jocelyn, the youngest of Charlie and Allina Green’s three daughters, was participating in dance competitions during summer 2021 when she and her mother noticed that she  became winded.

Jocelyn had always been a spitfire, active in dance and cheerleading. She also experienced pain in her chest that seemed like a possible muscle strain.

She made several doctor visits in August thinking the problem might be related to asthma and allergies, and she received two new inhalers. She also had undergone a physical that month, and it was determined she was severely anemic. 

“It was starting to get hard to breathe, and I was losing my breath really easily,  … and my chest started to hurt sometimes,” Jocelyn said. 

On Sept. 12, while she was cheerleading at a football game for Westerville St. Paul School, where she was beginning eighth grade, Jocelyn said she “wasn’t able to do a lot” of the cheers, and Allina pulled her off the field. They headed for a Nationwide Children’s Close to Home clinic in Westerville.

“They took a scan, and they found a mass on my chest,” Jocelyn said. “But I didn’t find out until the next day that it was cancer.

“They sent us straight to the main campus emergency room, and then straight to ICU,” Allina said. “‘Traumatic’ doesn’t even describe it.

“Our whole world turned black, and I just had no idea how I was ever going to tell someone, a child, that they had cancer. It was very hard as a mom to say she had cancer, but I know the hospital encourages it. I can’t even describe the words.”

The mass on her chest was blocking 48% of her esophagus, and fluid amassed around her heart and lungs. A drain was placed in her chest that remained there for three weeks. Within two days of chemotherapy, the mass broke down, but she developed acute kidney dysfunction and had to undergo dialysis for three days.

“Each time they would take a test or they did an X-ray, they would keep saying, ‘We’re sure it’s this’ type of cancer, Allina said. “But then it just kept on getting worse and worse.”

A spinal tap caused Jocelyn to have seizures, necessitating scans to make sure her health wasn’t affected.

That’s a lot of trauma for a then-13-year-old, but looking back now, Jocelyn said, “I don’t really remember much of it.”

After three weeks of treatment, Jocelyn went home on Oct. 2. The spritely teen had gone into the hospital weighing around 97 pounds. She was down to 77 pounds after losing the muscle mass she had built through her physical activities.

“It’s a lot of post-traumatic syndrome, because the girl I took into the hospital wasn’t the girl I brought home,” Allina said.

“It was really hard for me to walk for a long time,” Jocelyn said. “I couldn’t go up the stairs at my house until, I’d say, maybe November. I lost all my strength.”

Coping with treatment

Although she returned home to Westerville in October 2021, she would spend countless hours during the next year, sometimes more than 10 hours a day, on the 11th floor at Nationwide Children’s, where the children’s oncology and hematology department is located. 

“It was just nonstop back and forth for treatments,” her mom said. “You need so many blood transfusions, then you need platelet transfusions, and there are so many side effects from the chemo.”

The chemotherapy has made Jocelyn’s hair fall out twice. It’s currently growing back after a recent round of chemo.

“I was admitted into the hospital maybe five times or maybe more because I either got a blood clot as a side effect or I got pancreatitis as a side effect,” Jocelyn said. “And there was just one week in the summer my blood counts were so low I kept getting nosebleeds, and they wouldn’t stop.

“And then I got COVID this summer. And that turned into croup. My immune system is down. But the last time I was admitted into the hospital was June, and that’s pretty good.”

The rigorous treatments and recovery kept her from resuming in-home school for several months. When she began again, tutors came to the family’s home.

The treatment, recovery, fatigue and compromised immune system essentially wiped out in-person attendance at St. Paul during her eighth-grade year. She went back to the school building for the final few days of classes in spring and to graduate with her classmates. She also received the sacrament of confirmation at St. Paul Church.

Going to high school

Before the cancer hit, Jocelyn had planned to follow her sisters – Jillian, a freshman at Miami University, and Juliana, a sophomore at Ohio State University – to DeSales. But with her eighth-grade year essentially wiped out and with the tenuous status of her health, there were concerns about her returning to classes and adapting to a new environment. 

But the DeSales administration had a plan in place, her mother said. Jocelyn balances treatments and classes, and she has returned to limited cheerleading. 

“Everyone’s really welcoming here and super nice,” Jocelyn said. “Everyone tells me here just how strong I am.”

Her ability to adapt to high school is a testament to her fortitude. Garrick said Jocelyn recently spent a week with treatments in the morning and classes in the afternoon.

“People don’t realize she’s still in treatment,” Allina said. “It’s hard, because she might fall asleep every day in school because she’s still taking the chemo pills, and she has the medicine she takes, her blood thinners for blood pressure, because she still has the acute kidney damage and she gets blood clots. That’s a side effect of chemo.”

Benefiting from support

Without question, the past year has been anything but easy for the Green family. Jocelyn’s condition necessitated drastic changes and sacrifice.

Allina, a teacher at Heritage Middle School in Westerville, and her husband decided that Allina would stay home with Jocelyn during her recovery. 

“My daughter, who was a senior at DeSales, I missed out on a lot of things with her so I wouldn’t have to leave the hospital,” Allina said. “She was a varsity cheerleader, and my husband made all her games.”

Allina missed almost an entire year of teaching, but because of the sick days she had accumulated and her colleagues’ donating their sick days, the family didn’t lose income.

Earlier this year, Allina signed up for a walk benefiting the lymphoma-leukemia society and set her fundraising goal at $250. She raised more than $7,000.

Those are just a few of the blessings the family has received from the community.

“We had meals every day for probably six or seven months from (Generations) dance studio. They did a meal train, and we had dinners just nonstop,” Allina said. “The eighth-grade parents got us a very high-end cooler for our porch where the meals would go. And I could just keep going on and on. 

“But what the community did for us, it just shows what a sweet person Jocelyn is. She’s just the most positive kid you’ll ever meet.”

Father Jonathan Wilson, the pastor at St. Paul, provided spiritual support, coming to the house on weekends to offer Mass and Holy Communion.

“I will have to say when she was diagnosed, and they told me those words, I was very angry,” Allina said. “I just didn’t understand why it didn’t happen to me and why it had to happen to her. And I have to admit, there are still times I ask why, but I don’t think I’ll ever know that.”

Garrick came to know the family while the siblings have attended DeSales, and he’s not surprised to see how they’re handling this adversity and the generosity that Jocelyn showed with her donation.

“It still moves me profoundly,” he said. “Faith is such an important part of their DNA.

“While in some respects you are somewhat taken aback that a 14-year-old has the maturity and the worldview to make that decision. But you put it in the context of the manner in which she has been raised by her family and their involvement at St. Paul, it’s something that I could see her doing.”

Jocelyn’s generosity doesn’t come as a surprise to Allina, who said her daughter was a giver at a young age. Jocelyn credits her family and Catholic school for instilling that attitude. 

“I’ve always felt like, if I’m able to help, I will,” she said, “because they’ve always taught me to treat people the way you want to be treated and be kind, and it’s just always stuck with me.”

Looking to the future

Jocelyn and her family know the exact date – Jan. 18, 2024 – that her treatments are scheduled to end. She’s currently in a maintenance phase. 

Each day she’s hoping to feel a little stronger.

“Every kid that goes through this with blood cancers, it’s a long haul,” Allina said. “Unfortunately, we’re considered one of the lucky ones. When you’re in the hospital, you see that because there’s so many cancers where the treatment may be quicker but the relapse is much greater.

“There’s still a long way to go.”