Dragon boat races for a cause

Kelsey Timothy will compete this weekend in her third Montana Dragon Boat Festival along with her brain-themed team, Grey Matter, well after doctors thought she’d be gone.

Timothy, 27, was diagnosed 2 1/2 years ago with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive malignant tumor in the frontal lobe of her brain. But the Flathead High School graduate is convinced she will be the first to survive her disease and continues to live her life as if she doesn’t have cancer.

“It’s the hardest but most fun two-and-a-half-minute thing you can do,” Timothy said of the race. “I feel wrong for asking people to help because they’ve done so much, but they keep giving. I’m flabbergasted.”

The Grey Matter team has placed in its category the last two years, but Timothy’s mother has set a very strict requirement to get aboard.

“You have to raise $200 to get on my boat,” Columbia Falls High School health teacher Betsy Funk said. “And we have 21 people actively raising money.”

The Grey Matter boat will race Saturday and Sunday at the Montana Dragon Boat Festival. The team will wear black shirts with a rainbow dragon on them.

Some sponsors for the team include Insignia Custom Embroidery in Whitefish, Total Screen Design in Polson and First Interstate Bank, which has a “Kelsey Timothy Glioblastoma Fund” which is accepting donations.

The money goes directly to pay for Timothy’s deductible and medical expenses. She had surgery to remove the tennis ball-sized tumor, but because the brain is such a complex and sensitive organ, there is no way to know if all the cancer was removed.

“It’s like if you spill a shaker of pepper on your kitchen counter,” Funk said. “You can clean up the big pile pretty easily, but you’ll be finding specks of pepper all over your kitchen for the next week. She’s so sick of people asking if her treatment is over. It’s never over.”

Timothy will have to do five days of chemotherapy a month for the rest of her life in case any of those residual “specks” of cancer become a threat.

“It’s awful — I’m poisoning myself to get better,” Timothy said. “And it’s really expensive poison. I still have to pay for it. The worst part is, we don’t even know if it’s working. There’s no evidence it does.”

Wracked with chemotherapy, losing her hair and vomiting more often than she would like to recall, Timothy wanted to continue working.

“I coach a youth girls soccer team,” Timothy said. “This will be my fourth season. It’s just so much fun. If I could coach for a living, I would.”

The Columbia Falls School District has been huge for Timothy as well, since she was on her mother’s school insurance and the district has allowed Funk to take days off to help take Timothy to treatment and other necessities.

Funk has worked hard to find support for her daughter, but has found it difficult.

“When she was diagnosed, I looked for brain cancer support groups in the valley and there were none,” she said. “You don’t really talk about brain cancer because it kills people. Our team could potentially bring hope to people.”

When first diagnosed, Timothy was given a 12 percent chance to survive two years. She quickly made a bucket list.

“She wants to get married, she wants to have kids, she wants to visit her cousin in Mexico,” Funk said. “She got to stand next to her sister at her wedding and we had high tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel. Maybe not everything is in the cards, but she is such an inspiration.”

The two-year benchmark has come and gone and Timothy now has a 36 percent chance to make it five years.

“It’s still not 50 percent, but it’s better,” Timothy said. “I don’t really live life like I have cancer. I’ve got things to do. It’s not a death sentence, it’s just another way to live.”