Remembering Josh
August 4th, 2010
Josh’s funeral is today.
I wish I could be there.
His wife, Kim, is one of my friends. Our kids are roughly the same ages. Kim and I met one New Years Eve when we were both pregnant with our third children. Their community was my community when I lived in Seattle.
I want to honor him as somebody who had a big impact on me and has been a role model to me as a cancer patient. He was a huge support when my brother was going through treatment. Josh’s cancer battle was more protracted than my brother Jeremy’s. Jeremy stayed in treatment from the time he was diagnosed until he entered hospice less than 2 years later.
Josh went in and out of treatment several times. He had periods of remission. Enough time to build a family, to edit his movie about his second round of treatment with epitheliod sarcoma. That was the bout where he lost his left hand.
If you see Josh’s movie or read his blog, it gives you an inkling of how he managed to keep his humor and humanity. He used his cancer as an opportunity to dig deeper spiritually, to educate the rest of us about what it was he was going through. In this way, he was a role model for me. He helped me have the courage and commitment to share my own treatment with others because I knew how much I learned from what he shared. His honesty has helped me be honest.
As a blogger and filmmaker, Josh was a vigilante patient. He often brought his video camera to his appointments or hospital stays (sometimes to Kim’s chagrin). Once, he was hospitalized and the doctors were unsure of the cause of fluid build-up in his lungs. He was in his hospital bed, anxiously awaiting the results of tests that might clarify his situation.
A resident doctor came in to check on him. Josh caught on film this man’s utter ineptitude in interacting with him. To give you an idea of how bad it was, Josh put it on YouTube under the title “Doctor Asshole,” which was painfully accurate. In the clip, Josh was asking completely reasonable questions and Dr. A kept obfuscating, eventually becoming belligerent and rude.
Watching the clip, I kept saying aloud, “Just say, ‘I don’t know.’ Three words, dude. ‘I. Don’t. Know.’ And then say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Josh’s hospital made him take the clip off of YouTube, but he knew that the doctor had been reprimanded and, hopefully, educated about why his approach was completely unacceptable. In this way, Josh contributed to improved treatment for all the patients that came after him in this young doctor’s career.
That was only one of the many ways Josh was courageous and heroic. To get to know Josh more, watch his film or read his blog.
His memory will truly be for a blessing.
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Thank you for sharing this incredible video and blog about your friend Josh.
His blog is a beautiful tribute to a life well lived if too short. I am blessed a hundred times to see just one glimpse of his life. I hope you who grieve are all blessed a thousand times by the memory of such an amazing guy.
What a moving tribute. Thank you for sharing this . . . I look forward to watching his movie. I wish I could have seen that youtube video, well, maybe not actually as I have certainly experienced my own Dr. Assholes in my treatment. How remarkable that your friend captured it and shared it with the world . . . it is never quite the same thing to retell how a doctor was inept or treated you badly as it is to actually be able to show it like your friend did . . . that had to make a huge difference for so many patients to come.
My thoughts are with your friend’s family.
Thank you for sharing your friend, Josh, with us. I would have enjoyed being his friend. I had a Dr. A also. He didn’t know thyroid tissue from his bottom. The things he told me post surgery were incredibly lame considering his 30+ years of “experience.”
I believe that each time Josh’s name is mentioned it is a prayer of goodness for all who knew him (or wish they had).
My prayers are with Josh’s family and friends.
I do not care for doctors for this reason. I have met way too many of them who can’t tell a needle from snot in their nose. Makes me crazy that sometimes even the patient is more knowledgeable than the doctor or even nurse. You have to be a very patient person in order to deal with incompetent doctors or health care in general and I am not a patient client. That is why I am so thankful to have personally known Josh. Reading his blog helped me with that.
:’-(
Josh was my cousin. Even though it was through marriage [my cousin on my mom's side married Josh's brother] he felt like family anyway. He was a great man and it is sad that he is gone. Pretty unbelievable in fact. He and my mother were diagnosed around the same time, but the amazing man he was he lived much much longer than she did. Kim is a rock and amazing as well. Thank you for sharing this with other people about him. Perhaps it will and can spread the knowledge about cancer and how to truly live life.
may josh’s memory be a blessing – he gifted the world with so much goodness, humor and love. though i have never met him or you – i am awestruck by how you characterize him.