Help as Joshua and Beth Ross battle Leukemia

We’d Like to Introduce Ourselves

Greetings, 

      We are Josh and Beth. In 2015 we had the fortune of meeting in one of the most remote and unpeopled places in the lower forty-eight. We often shake our heads with disbelief that we encountered one another in a place defined by an absence of people. The odds were so long. Beth had taken a job at a Wyoming dude ranch, on a whim leaving behind her life in faraway Virginia. Josh had taken a job with the Wyoming department of Game and Fish. This brought us to a magical valley between the Absaroka and the Wind River mountains. A valley that is not on any tourist circuits.




The Beginning

     The dude ranch where Beth worked happened to be the same dude ranch that Josh had worked at in the past, and he remained friends with the ranch owners. It was them he went to visit when out of the common house where the 2015 staff gathered for meals that Beth emerged, walking down the boardwalk toward Josh in his battered old Toyota pickup. At the time, Josh had a young dog in his truck with him, and Beth’s first words to Josh were, “I like your dog.” That summer they danced around one another for several months, Josh hanging out at the ranch later and later each night just to be around Beth, whose quirkiness of character was so endearing. Dorks by nature, they flittered over long sessions of Bananagrams, a word game. Beth always won. It felt like some force was moving them in orbit with one another. One day, Josh fixed Beth’s flat tire at the ranch, and when he stood up they spontaneously embraced.  By the end of that summer, they were more or less inseparable. They even chose to spend the winter together in the lovely middle of nowhere place in Wyoming, which was like getting to know one another in a pressure cooker with the nearest neighbor five miles down the road. We learned a lot about one another that winter, feeding the wood stove chunks of pine and fir against the formidable Wyoming cold. It was paradise, really, a place where the howl of wolves cut the otherwise vast silence of the starry nights. 




The Burden of Cancer

     These days life finds us in circumstances much different than those peaceful days in a wild place. Josh was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. The word itself is ugly. Nobody ever wants to hear that they or a loved one has cancer. The diagnosis brought us right to the terrible center of absolute fear. Last week our lives were much like the lives of every ordinary American. But this week, and for the foreseeable future, our lives are defined by the looming spectre of cancer treatment. Even though Josh’s type of leukemia has promising treatment options, it is so difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that your own body has begun to destroy itself. During challenging times it is especially important to find hope in circumstances of fate. There is no lucky cancer, but there may be some luck to be found in the timing and fashion of how it is caught by medical experts. 

     The truth is that Josh was feeling fine, robust, healthy as a young gazelle, and it was only because Beth wanted Josh to go to the optometrist to get fitted for contacts so that she could see his eyes without being obscured behind glasses that this beast was discovered.

Josh took an optional retinal X-ray. It cost forty bucks, a sum that on almost any other day of the year Josh would have been too frugal to bother spending. That X-ray revealed leaking blood vessels in both eyes. When you are thirty-eight years old, in the prime of life, you kind of just take your health for granted. A few days after that appointment, blood work would reveal an alarmingly high white blood cell count. The news came from Josh’s general practitioner sometime around seven at night. There is no way to articulate how emotionally devastating it is to hear that your life is in jeopardy from an invisible adversary that nobody wants to fight. Yet the thing about cancer is that you have no choice but to fight. You have to accept right away that this is now your life. There is no going back to your previous life. For Josh personally, the hardest truth to accept was the way his illness would affect his family and friends. Your heart breaks for them. You desperately don’t want to leave them prematurely behind in a scary world without you. 



Gratitude For Life and Our Next Steps

     The first double lesson of cancer is that none of us are alone in life and that you cannot fight cancer alone. We have been uplifted by the widespread outpouring of support from friends and family across the country. To be loved so widely honestly comes as something of a shock. Most of us live deeply private lives and we worry often that few people see us, know us, and care for us deeply. But if there is one silver lining of cancer, it is that these tender misgivings are proven demonstrably foolish. Cancer brings love into the bullseye of your life. Without such love life with cancer would be profoundly miserable.


     Unfortunately, because Josh is now immunocompromised, coming down with COVID-19 is a serious threat to his life. Due to this, Beth had to immediately resign from her job in childcare, making our household income effectively zero. For the foreseeable future, Josh and Beth are limited to personal contact with doctors, oncologists, nurses, a therapist, and a social worker. When you have cancer, your primary focus must be getting healthy, and it is imperative that nothing corrodes your ability to make this happen. 

     Anxiety over money under ordinary circumstances is a real burden on one's health and well-being, but when you have to go to war to live there really just is no room in all your waking hours for additional worry. It is not easy to ask for money. In fact it makes me feel ashamed. But I am trying to overcome that ridiculousness because to do this, we are going to need some financial help. We don’t expect anybody to donate. All donations will be used for medical expenses, transportation expenses to and from the cancer center, housing, food, and utilities. It cannot be overstated how grateful we are for any and all help provided. 

     If you would like, we could not appreciate it more if you would share our fundraiser on Facebook or any other means you have. Keep hoping for the best for us along this unwelcome journey. Your hope and positivity are our essential allies. 

     We have a Venmo account set up, if that is something you are more comfortable with. Any amount helps, no matter how small. Reach out to [email redacted] if that is something you would like to do. 

If you would like to send Josh a care package, please reach out for our address.

     We live a modest lifestyle and are in general very frugal people. Our monthly expenses during these cold months in Montana average between $1,500 and $2,000. Whatever financial help we receive now will keep a roof over our heads, and just as importantly help us not waste our vital energies worrying about money. Without paid family medical leave from work, reaching out for support during these challenging times is our only option. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts and souls!