Jays get boost from teen fighting cancer
Caitlin Timmins, her father, Wil, left, mom Deb, and Dr. Daniel Morgenstern.
The last time Caitlin Timmins sat in the stands of a baseball game, she was cancer-free.
Since then, the 16-year-old has faced three different types of cancer — a battle she continues to fight.
“I am overjoyed that I’m actually at this game right now,” Timmins said Sunday, speaking outside the stadium where she was invited to attend a Blue Jays game with her family.
Major League Baseball is the founding donor of Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), says co-founder Kathleen Lobb.
To celebrate 10 years of the organization’s impact on cancer research, Timmins — a patient in a clinical trial funded by the charity — was invited to the game and to watch Dr. Peter Dirks throw out the first pitch.
Timmins, a Woodstock resident, has been fighting cancer since she was nine years old.
Shortly after her first visit to a baseball game, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Over the years it spread into her lymph nodes and then to her cervix, as she faced treatment after treatment.
Cancer runs in her family — she said she’s seen aunts, cousins and grandparents fall victim to it.
“I had watched cancer kill a majority of my family. So I thought, oh, I was going to end up with them.”
Timmins said the clinical trial that SU2C helped fund was the “last option” she had for treatment during her third cancer diagnosis.
“It was really scary, honestly,” she said, admitting her misgivings about going into it.
“But after the first three months when I started to see results, my tumour had shrunk. (Then I) felt grateful that I had started this trial and that it had been funded for me to do.”
Also at the game was her doctor, Daniel Morgenstern. He works at the Hospital for Sick Children, co-leading an SU2C team on hyper-mutant pediatric cancer research.
Morgenstern said Timmins has been “amazingly patient” during her visits every two weeks for treatment or checkups as part of the trial.
“She’s been great to look after,” he said. “It’s been great to get to know her a bit over the last year.”
The trial is testing a relatively new type of drug to treat cancer patients that focuses on boosting the immune system as opposed to chemotherapy, Morgenstern said.
Although it’s been tested in adults, there haven’t been many studies on its use for children.
SU2C isn’t the only organization funding this clinical trial, but it and the background science it has funded have been “absolutely critical,” Morgenstern said.
Timmins just found out she was going to the Jays game Thursday, during an appointment.
“I’m just excited to be out at the game with my family. This is something that we normally do at home, like we sit and watch baseball or hockey,” she said. “So it’s just nice to be out with my family and have some quality time.”
Dirks leads one of two Canadian “Dream Teams” that SU2C has formed.
His team is focused on studying and developing treatments for brain cancer.
He said the Dream Teams are like “all-star teams for different cancers.”
He was nervous, but excited, ahead of his pitch.
“I am a brain surgeon, so we do some difficult things where we’re on the spot,” said Dirks.
“But you don’t usually do that in front of 40,000 fans.”
As Timmins and her family watched, Dirks successfully threw his pitch to Jays leftfielder Ryan Borucki, who was acting as catcher. Timmins and Dirks may have been a good-luck charm for the team: the Blue Jays went on to win the game, 2-1, over the Tampa Bay Rays.
“Local teams all the way,” said Timmins.
Timmins is going into Grade 12 this fall, but isn’t sure yet what she wants to do after high school.
She said she sees many possible avenues — something she wasn’t always certain of in the past seven years of treatment.
“It got really tough,” she said. “I did get very depressed about it and didn’t really want to go out into the world; but once all these opportunities started coming, like Stand Up to Cancer, it became more clear to me that this was worth it. It’s worth my fighting.”