Help with Jim's Medical Expenses

My husband, Jim, has been a hard-working carpenter for nearly 40 years and he's had his share of bumps and bruises along the way as one might expect when working in construction, but in 2002 he suffered serious work-related injuries to both his knees.  His orthopedic doctor told him he would probably require knee replacement surgeries in the future and the hope was that he could make it to retirement and Medicare, which would mean not having the financial hardship of taking time off from work.  For the past 15 years, Jim's been managing the chronic pain of his degenerative arthritis with medication, cortisone and lubrication injections that have allowed him to continue working, but unfortunately his right knee (the "good one") had other ideas.  In June, several days after the second of three maintenance injections, his knee locked up, became swollen and extremely painful.  He wasn't able to stand on his leg or put any pressure on it and he couldn't walk without the aid of crutches, making it impossible for him to work in his remodeling business.  When we met with the orthopedic doctor, he told us what we didn't want to hear, that the damage to Jim's knee had reached the point where any further maintenance treatments would no longer help him and he needed total knee replacement surgery.  No more waiting for retirement.

I never expected to be in the situation of having no resources to fall back on and needing to ask for this kind of financial assistance at this stage of our life.  During the last four months that Jim's been off work, he's lost several jobs because the homeowners couldn't wait until after he had his surgery and returned to work.  The medical bills for the doctor's visits, x-rays, CT scan and lab tests started coming in before the surgery and there will be more bills for his surgery, hospitalization, follow-up doctor's visits and physical therapy, and Jim won't be released to go back to work for at least another couple of months.  I've struggled with the idea of starting a gofundme page, but I don't know what else to do because we have no other options available to us.  Any donation you can give to help out with Jim's medical expenses for his knee replacement surgery and loss of income would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!