Healthy Aussie tradie reveals deadly rare cancer symptom he nearly missed
Tim Babbage was fishing with the boys when he felt a bit of an indigestion.
The 40-year-old builder doesn’t normally drink or eat unhealthy food, so thought the short break away from home had blown him over.
Three weeks later, he was diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer, after scans showed “a tumor the size of a house stone” in his gut.
The diagnosis left Tim shocked.
He was pushed on 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 thought about cancer. And that it would be so big and speechless,” he explained.
Tim Babbage pictured with his daughter Eloise, five, and wife Gillian
The family feels crushed by his unexpected cancer diagnosis
His wife, Gillian Campbell, is trying to figure out “what’s next.”
She is pregnant with the couple’s second child and knew at age 41 that giving birth to and raising a newborn and arguing with their five-year-old Eloise would be difficult.
“Now I have to figure out how to do that without Tim’s help, and how to support him with chemo as well.
“It’s one of those things you think could never happen to us.”
The couple are in the ‘force of their lives’ after years of hard work in tough corporate gigs.
“Tim just changed careers to become a builder. He’s halfway through our house renovation and we’re about to complete our family,” she said.
“These must be the dream years.”
In fact, medical emergencies or Tim’s inability to work at all were so far off the couple’s radar that they planned for him to be the sole breadwinner for a year.
Tim, left, had recently changed careers and said he felt healthier than ever because he was always outside and getting physical
The family was in its prime when the disease was discovered: Gillian was pregnant with their second child
“I’m taking unpaid maternity leave, we knew it was going to get tighter, but now it feels like it’s going to be impossible. I’ve looked around, but because we’ve had a good job and worked hard, we don’t seem to qualify for help,” she said.
“I’m so stressed about making ends meet, paying the mortgage, and taking care of the kids.
“And devastated that this happened to him and our family.”
Tim is “a tough guy” by all accounts, but always took his health seriously.
“I thought it was indigestion at first, but it slowly got worse.
“The night before I went to the hospital, I ate two tablespoons of casserole and was full. Gillian asked me what I ate on the way home, but I just couldn’t eat.
“I’m 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 so much pain in his stomach that he decided to go to the doctor.
“Gillian said it must be bad for me to take a day off, it takes a lot to put me down.” he said.
When he came to the doctor, they had a lot of hypotheses, all pointing to gallstones, but they offered him the option of getting some scans done out of pocket.
‘I think it’s important that people know they can do that. So what if I pay $100, which is less than I would have lost if I skipped a day’s work.
“And if I hadn’t paid it, they wouldn’t have found the cancer when they did.”
During the scan, he was told to go straight to the emergency room, where, much to his horror, they immediately rushed him in.
The cancer is a type of sarcoma: fast-growing, difficult to treat, and rare.
“It grows in the fatty tissue and around the organs, so it can grow for a while before you get symptoms,” he said.
The diagnosis came before the long weekend in June and ten days later Tim started chemo
The stage 4 diagnosis left the family in turmoil. But Tim refuses to let the cancer win.
“They asked me if I enjoyed doing chemotherapy at the highest level. It will affect you more, but it’s the strongest dose and you’re more likely to die from it.’
The post-chemotherapy plan should be considered once the team understands how the cancer has responded to treatment.
“We hope treatments shrink it enough to cut it out,” he said.
Gill and Tim have told their daughter that “Daddy has a sore tummy” to protect her from the harrowing truth.
“We said doctors are helping, that Dad got his hair cut at the hospital,” Gill told FEMAIL.
“She’s going to daycare as usual. Dad is in the hospital for a week and then back for three weeks, we just don’t want her to be too scared of him.
Gillian never asked for help, but a friend insisted she start a Go Fund me to raise money to help ease the financial hardship.
And finally she gave in.
READ MORE Charlie Hunt’s Sarcoma Battle:
In 2020, Charlie Hunt, 53, was diagnosed with sarcoma. He underwent major surgery on his right leg, not knowing if he would ever walk or run again, and later had surgery on both his lungs.
She wants other people undergoing a scary medical diagnosis to do the same.
“Gather your village. It took weeks for me to accept help.
“People want to help, they want to babysit, fill your freezer, do what they can, so take it,” she said.
Tim hopes for a speedy recovery so he can get back to work. He fears he won’t be able to adequately support his wife while she recovers from their second child.
The family wants to raise awareness about the disease
He says he is already confident that it has shrunk.
“I can now eat and sleep on that side, which the doctors say is a good sign.”
Currently, he hopes to be healthy by January.
Doctors still don’t know much about the cancers, but say genetic factors and exposure to chemicals may increase the risk.
The Mayo Clinic explained that there are 70 types of sarcoma that all involve soft tissue — and all are super rare. The problem is that everyone behaves differently, making the survival statistics bleak.