After losing 2 children to cancer, 3rd member of Bear Lake family fights tumor

BLOOMINGTON — Despite losing two siblings to cancer, Tristen Horne isn’t letting his own cancer diagnosis get him down.

The Bear Lake High School student has been commuting to Primary Children’s Hospital for chemotherapy to fight what doctors believe is an unusual form of chordoma. Friends and family have been rallying to support him through the process.

“Tristen is the most optimistic kid you will ever meet,” said his mother Dixie Howell. “He’s got a great attitude. He’s very positive and he has the highest spirits and the best attitude of anyone.”

Tristen is Howell’s third child to be diagnosed with cancer. Her first child to be diagnosed with cancer was a baby daughter who died in 2001 due to complications from an atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor. A second daughter was diagnosed with the same type of cancer as a toddler and died in 2006.

“That’s kind of when they thought maybe it was genetic, so the kids went to a geneticist and that’s when they found out it was genetic,” Howell said. “At that time they said Tristen was just a carrier of the gene, but it didn’t guarantee he would get cancer. We just kind of watched him and stuff throughout his life.”

In August, the teenager was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis and schwannomatosis, which his father also has. However, it appeared Tristen may escape cancer until early 2016.

“It was on Leap Day that he called me from school and he was just in a lot of pain,” his mother said. “So I picked him up from school and he was just hurting so bad that he had tears and so I called his pediatrician and they felt something for sure in his right cheek of his buttocks and set up an MRI for the following Friday. The MRI obviously showed a mass of what they thought was the size of two or three golf balls.”

By the time Tristen arrived at Primary Children’s Hospital to have the mass biopsied, it had rapidly grown to the size of four or five golf balls, according to Howell. She said initially doctors thought it was an epithelioid sarcoma, but when they sent a sample to the children’s hospitals in Los Angeles and Boston those results came back as being from a chordoma.

During that period the tumor continued to grow, so Howell said doctors decided to start Tristen on chemotherapy. The mass shrunk after the first round, so he underwent a second round of chemotherapy towards the end of April. Now, he’s waiting to see if it worked so the family can decide what to do next.

“We don’t have a set plan because of where he is,” Howell said.

Through it all, Tristen’s friends at Bear Lake High School have shown their support. He is currently on an academic hold while trying to stay healthy, but Howell said students at the school did everything they could to help him stay longer without having to worry about fitting in when he couldn’t wear normal clothes.

“Everybody — like I think they said 99 percent of the kids in school wore pajamas that week before he started chemo and spring break just to make him feel comfortable about wearing pajamas to school, because then he wouldn’t hurt at school,” she said.

Just before his second round of chemo, a friend made him bracelets. Others in the community have stepped in to help as well, with one family friend setting up a YouCaring account. Students at Paris Elementary School, where Howell works, hosted a full week of activities for him.

“He was their guest of honor and he was really proud of them because most of those little kids, I told him, raised all that money and earned it themselves,” she said. “That’s the joy of working there. I get to hear about how they earned their chore money and donated it.”

Those acts of service have buoyed the family, Howell said. Tristen has three siblings who are still alive: an older brother who is about to graduate, a six-year-old sister and a six-year-old step-sister.

The high school student has big dreams for the future. He wants to become a zoologist, so he hopes to earn good grades in school and attend Boise State University. His mother said he loves animals.