Life has thrown some curveballs at Barry Gosselin, and now comes the nastiest he’s ever faced: Stage Four cancer.
Through all of those curveballs - less than five feet tall, a body weight of about 100 pounds, previous diseases that have caused major lung surgery, cognition challenges, the loss of parents, and more - his brother Ron has done whatever he could to look after his sibling. This latest hurdle is hard to handle alone.
“I’ve been taking care of him now for the past 12 years,” said Ron, ever since Gosselin’s lung surgery left him with only about half of one lung. “All I can do is just make sure he’s comfortable.”
It’s hard to even do that, right now. Ron works industrial jobs and the closest one he could obtain is in a work camp and only allows him about a day per week back at home. Gosselin is currently in Prince George undergoing laser radiation treatment, and when he comes home, his brother Ron won’t be there.
After the laser radiation comes chemotherapy. They can’t do that, though, until he heals from the initial cyst surgery that discovered the cancer in the first place. Every week of waiting on that is another setback in Gosselin’s health.
“The cancer is super aggressive,” Ron said. “Barry has always been positive, upbeat, always friendly, always telling jokes, always out on his scooter even when he was sick. I don’t know anybody who has a problem with Barry. He’s never had an enemy as far as I know. Everyone’s always got along with him, and I’ve always felt obliged to protect him because he’s so tiny, all his life. He’d get bullied and whatnot, so I’d protect him. But now he’s got something and I can’t protect him. It’s stressful for me. I want to stay with him and take care of him, but I have to work so much out of town. My company has been really good, and my old crew got together some donations that really help. I just have to do whatever I can for him.”
Gosselin is 43 years old. He and Ron grew up in Burns Lake, their late father being the well known local welder (and other trades) August Miller and stepmother Lynn Shields. Their mother passed away when they were children.
“It’s finally sinking in for him how bad this is, and he’s really scared,” Ron said. “This is getting down to the wire, here, about what they’re doing, so we’re hoping this can make a difference and build his confidence.”
There are a few fundraising initiatives going on for Gosselin.
There are donation jars at Chevron, the Legion, Beachfront Grill, and the Co-op.
There is a meat raffle underway through Priestly Meats with a $500 value, tickets on sale for $10 which can be purchased by sending an etransfer to c.e.n82@icloud.com, the campaign organized on Facebook by Cilla Nicholas.
Third, there is a GoFundMe campaign going that has already collected more than $1,200 for Gosselin’s needs. That can be found at gofund.me/d5da018b or searching for Barry Gosselin on the GoFundMe homepage.
You can click the link directly to the GoFundMe page right HERE.