Joshua's Double Lung Transplant

Hi, my name is Robin Roberts. I am fundraising to help pay for a Vancouver hotel, medical expenses, food, vehicle rental, and lost wage earnings for my nephew Joshua, his partner Sarah, my sister Carol, her partner Randy, my other sister Trish, and our mum. Josh is currently getting a double lung transplant as I write this.

Joshua is 28 years old. He has been a kid who never drank, smoked, and never did drugs. I think he tried some drinks on his 19th birthday. Possibly at his high school grad. Other than that, Joshua has never been a party person. He is kind, loving, caring, and always willing to be there for people when they need him, when he could. He is one of the purest 27 year olds you'd meet.

Unfortunately for us, Joshua found out in 2019 that he had a degenerative lung disease called scleroderma. He did nothing to deserve getting scleroderma. At the time, the doctors said that in the future, he'd need to be on the lung transplant list as his lungs would eventually deteriorate. Scleroderma is an auto-immune disease where hardening of the skin occurs. If it happens in the organs, it becomes life-threatening and untreatable. Medication can slow it down, but not cure it.

In the meantime, Josh has tried working odd jobs. He has lived with an oxygen tank for more than two years so finding work has been difficult. Joshua just started a new job a few weeks ago, driving trucks. Around the same time, the doctors let Josh know that his lungs had degenerated enough to be on the transplant list. The doctors said he'd need blood tests every month to find a blood type match for the donor. We thought it would take months for it to happen.

Yesterday, on October 2nd, Joshua got the call from the doctors that a lung donor match was found and that he needed to go to the hospital to prep for his surgery. He is in surgery as I write this. I looked online, and it's a 4-12 hour operation.

He will need to be in the hospital for one month after the surgery to recover and to be tube fed the whole time. Carol has taken time off work to look after him for two months. He will also need to be tube-fed at home for the first month out of the hospital.

Please help out if you can! Carol, Randy, Trish, and my mum, will all be staying in a Vancouver hotel and need help with food costs, last-minute air travel, vehicle rental, and gas. I don't know if there will be any unknown costs after the surgery. They will also need help due to lost wages while they are in Vancouver helping Josh recover from his surgery.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for your love and kindness.