Josh and Kim Isaac already behaved like an old married couple when they were wed in 1995. They stayed up late talking, played cards, spent lazy Sunday mornings at home. They went on bike rides around their Los Angeles home, sometimes caught a movie, hung out with friends.

Little did they know how much change they would have to endure, and how precious time could be in their young marriage.

In 1998, Josh, then just 25 years old, was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma, an extremely rare cancer, but one that seemed to be treatable if caught early. There was unnerving talk of amputating the hand where the tumor occurred. At the time, they were less concerned about him dying than they were with saving his hand.

“I thought amputation was the most horrible thing ever,” said Kim. “I wasn’t thinking about it metastasizing. I was more concerned about getting the cancer out and saving his hand.”

Josh had surgery to remove the tumor and underwent radiation therapy and limb salvaging — a skin graft from his forearm to his palm, a skin graft from his leg to his forearm, a tendon from his toe to his pointer finger — and that was that.

For the next five years, they went on with life, got graduate degrees and good jobs. They had their first son, Jacob, in 2000. Their second son, Sam, was born in 2003.

But during that time, Josh started having trouble with his hand again.

His manual dexterity deteriorated until his hand eventually was rigid, his thumb frozen to his pointer finger. He decided to have surgery to restore some mobility. A shadowy fear lurked in the back of his mind.

“Because of the loss of feeling, I was thinking something was going on,” he said.

“I wasn’t,” Kim replied.

She was aware of his concerns, but agreed with his specialist that the stiffness and pain were from scar tissue and the tendon replacement in his finger.

Because of his case history, the hand surgeon had the tissue biopsied.

The office called Josh in for a follow-up appointment.

“I left work early that day. He came in and showed me the fax [from the lab],” Josh said. “I can’t even remember what he said. It’s a fog. It was like…holy shit. I was worried about my life.”

He drove home on autopilot. He remembers only that the doctor wanted him to call when he arrived at home, and all he had to listen to in the car was Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

“I came home that night and [she] looked at me and asked what was going on. I tried to hide it,” Josh said quietly. “When [she went] to put the kids down, I said, ‘Don’t fall asleep with the kids.’ She came back downstairs pretty quickly. She knew something was going on.”

“I thought he lost his job,” Kim said, laughing.

“He said the doctor appointment didn’t go too well,” she recalled. “I think I was trying to catch my breath and I burst into tears. The next morning I remember saying, ‘You cannot leave me with these two kids.’”

Chemotherapy didn’t work, so doctors went straight to amputation. The cancer metastasized, necessitating more surgery, then more chemotherapy. The mantle of mortality hung over their home.

“That was a pretty bleak time,” Josh said.

For a year, they lived on medical treatments, surgeries and tests.

Josh worried how he’d be able to manage the baby with only one hand. They stopped hanging out with some of their friends, and some of their friends stopped hanging out with them.

Because Josh was in and out of the University of Washington Medical Center, he was missing out on bonding with his young sons. Going home after treatment “was a way to feel so much better,” he said, but sometimes he was too exhausted to contribute to family life.

“I think in a lot of ways, Kim had it harder than I did,” he said. “She had to take care of the kids, keep the house in order and pare her hours.”

“For a young couple, we had dealt with more things than typical 31-year-olds deal with,” Kim said.

Josh’s treatment ended in April 2005, but with a sobering caveat.

“There’s a pretty good chance this’ll come back,” he said.

Still, they celebrated. “You learn to celebrate the celebrations you do get — birthday parties, clean diagnoses, getting through a hellish week at work,” he said.

Josh has been in remission two years now, and if he and Kim don’t hang out as much as they did when they were newlyweds, it has more to do with the fact they have two full-time jobs and two little boys.

Though still touched by cancer, the pursuit of other things is creeping back into their lives. Shortly after his treatment ended, Josh finished a documentary he started in 2004 to chronicle his experience. It was a rewarding accomplishment in itself, and one he hopes might touch other people. The documentary, called My Left Hand, was selected for show at the Seattle True and Independent Film Festival May 24-June 3.

The earthquake that rocked them has passed, but Kim still feels aftershocks now and then.

“Our life is back to normal, but my thoughts are not normal,” she said. “That’s the difference between the first and second diagnosis.”

The specter of recurrence remains, but they’ve chosen life as an antidote for the shadow of death.

Josh keeps his focus trained on things that matter and values his time with Kim and his sons. He’s looking forward to the birth of their third child.

“Does it seem crazy to be having a baby around this?” he asked, laughing.

Kim laughed, too. “Josh and I both were the youngest of three, so we always expected to have three.

“When this happened, we said, ‘We’re done.’ We gave away all our baby things,” she said. But in the months following his treatment, they revisited the dream they had as newlyweds, before cancer and radiation, amputation and chemotherapy. Their little girl is due in June.

“In my mind, it’s signifying to ourselves that life is going on. We’re not going to live in fear,” Kim said. “We’re Kim and Josh. We’re the same Kim and Josh we were before cancer.”

* * * * * * * Correction, April 17: The original version of this article incorrectly spelled the last name of Josh and Kim Isaac as “Isaacs.”