Tim Babbage was on a fishing trip with the boys when he had what felt like a little bit of indigestion.
The 40-year-old builder doesn’t typically drink or eat unhealthy foods, so figured the short holiday away from home had knocked him about.
Three weeks later, he was diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer after scans showed ‘a tumour the size of a house brick’ in his gut.
The diagnosis left Tim floored.
He was thrust onto the ‘cancer train’ and booked into Chris O’Brien Lifehouse. one of Australia’s leading cancer hospitals. within days of his diagnosis.
‘It all happened so fast, I couldn’t believe it. I never would have thought cancer. And for it to be that big, speechless,’ he explained.
Tim Babbage pictured with his daughter Eloise, five, and wife Gillian
The family have been left feeling crushed by his unexpected cancer diagnosis
His wife, Gillian Campbell, has been left trying to work out ‘what’s next’.
She is pregnant with the couple’s second child – and knew at 41 that giving birth and rearing a newborn as well as wrangling their five-year-old Eloise would be difficult.
‘Now I have to work out how to do that without Tim’s help, and how to support him through chemo as well.
‘It’s one of those things where you think it could never happen to us.’
The couple are in the ‘prime of their lives’ after working hard in tough corporate gigs for years.
‘Tim just changed careers to be a builder, he is halfway through renovating our house and we are about to complete our family,’ she said.
‘These are meant to be the dream years.’
In fact medical emergencies or Tim being unable to work at all had been so far off the couple’s radar that they had planned for him to be the sole bread winner for a year.
Tim, left, had recently changed careers and said he was feeling healthier than ever because he was always outside and getting physical
The family were in their prime when the disease was found – Gillian pregnant with their second child
‘I am taking unpaid maternity leave, we knew things would be tighter but now it feels like it will be impossible. I have looked around but because we have had good jobs and worked hard we don’t seem to qualify for help,’ she said.
‘I am so stressed about how we will make ends meet, pay the mortgage, support the kids.
‘And devastated that this has happened to him, to our family.’
Tim is ‘a tough bloke’ by all accounts but always took his health seriously.
‘I assumed it was indigestion at first but it slowly got worse.
‘The night before I went to the hospital I ate two spoons of casserole and was full. Gillian asked me what I had eaten on the way home but I just couldn’t eat.
‘I am a builder, I was hungry but there was no room,’ he said.
Gillian is pregnant with their second child – and terrified of the future
The next day he had pain in his stomach so bad he decided to go to the doctor.
‘Gillian said it must be bad for me to take the day off, it takes a lot to bring me down.’ he said.
When he got to the doctor they had a lot of hypothesis, with everything pointing toward Gall stones, but offered him the opportunity to have some scans, out of pocket.
‘I think it is important people know that they can do that. So what if I pay $100 – that’s less than I would have lost skipping a day’s work.
‘And if I didn’t pay it they wouldn’t have found the cancer when they did.’
During the scan he was told to go straight to emergency, where to his shock they ushered him straight in.
The cancer is a type of Sarcoma – fast growing, hard to treat and rare.
‘It grows in the fatty tissue, and around the organs so can grow for a while before you get any symptoms,’ he said.
The diagnosis came before the June long weekend and ten days later Tim began chemo
The Stage 4 diagnosis left the family rattled. But Tim refuses to let the cancer win.
‘They asked me if I was happy to do the top level chemo – it knocks you around more but it is the strongest dose and more likely to kill it.’
The plan after chemo is to be considered once the team understand how the cancer has reacted to treatment.
‘We are hoping treatments shrink it enough to cut it out,’ he said.
Gill and Tim have told their daughter ‘daddy has a sore tummy’ to protect her from the harrowing truth.
‘We said doctors are helping, that daddy got his hair cut at hospital,’ Gill told FEMAIL.
‘She is going to day care as usual. Daddy is in hospital for one week then back for three, we just don’t want her to be too scared for him.
Gillian has never asked for help – but a friend insisted she start a Go Fund me to raise money to relieve the financial hardship.
And finally she relented.
READ MORE Charlie Hunt’s sarcoma battle:
In 2020, Charlie Hunt, 53, was diagnosed with sarcoma. He had major surgery on his right leg, not knowing if he would ever walk or run again, and later had surgery on both of his lungs
She wants other people going through a scary medical diagnosis to do the same.
‘Rally your village. It took me weeks to accept help.
‘People want to help, they want to babysit, fill your freezer, do whatever they can so take it,’ she said.
Tim hopes for a speedy recovery so he can get back on the job. He is scared that he won’t be able to support his wife enough while she’s recovering after having their second baby.
The family want to raise awareness of the disease
He says he is already feeling confident it’s shrunk.
‘I can eat now and sleep on that side which doctors say is a good sign.’
At the moment he is hoping to be healthy by January.
Doctors still don’t know much about the cancers however say that genetic factors and chemical exposure can increase risk.
The Mayo Clinic explained there are 70 types of Sarcoma which all attach soft tissue – and are all super rare. The poblem is each one act differently making survival statistics grim.