Jake McLeod played high school football as a lineman for 3 1/2 seasons with the Duchess Park Condors and twice got his hands on the Matt Pearce Memorial Trophy as a PG Bowl champion.
Now at 25, he can’t wait until the day comes when he can celebrate a different kind of victory — one achieved with a return to good health and the active lifestyle that made him a success in football.
McLeod was 14 when one of his legs began to swell and that developed into condition known aggressive desmoid fibromatosis, which presents as tumours that attack the connective tissue of his leg. Although considered noncancerous, it produces similar symptoms and like cancer is treated with radiation and chemotherapy.
At the time of his diagnosis, McLeod was only the fifth kid in BC to develop the condition and it took some convincing but he was able to receive radiation treatments in Prince George at the BC Cancer Centre of the North.
But after nine years and 60 doses of radiation therapy, McLeod has reached his maximum lifetime limit to try to shrink the tumour on his leg. Chemotherapy has also been tried but there’s still no long-term solution in sight.
“At first they tried doing a surgery to begin with and the surgery looked successful and then we realized it had grown back,” said McLeod. “Chemotherapy and radiation kind of halted it but it didn’t do anything to stop it.
“It doesn’t like to be poked or prodded at and when it’s touched it likes to grow back more aggressive, so doing any type of surgery or touching it just results in a little bit more growth or damage.”
Seven months ago McLeod moved to Vancouver to be closer to health care specialists more familiar with treating his condition. He was in his apartment on Dec. 1 when his tumour swelled to the point where it burst through the skin, causing serious bleeding. McLeod passed out from the blood loss and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. Now he’s relying on medication to stop the growth while he awaits skin grafts to cover up his tumour.
“It’s a wood-like structure, hard-mass tissue that doesn’t metastasize like a regular cancer but does still have a lot of same attributes as standard cancer,” he said. “I was getting treatment (in Prince George) but it’s a little bit nicer to be close to the main institute that we have.
“The medication I’m on now is helping slowly but the effects seem to be coming to a standstill right now and I can’t really tell whether or not (the improvement) is continuing.”
The swelling has gone down but he’s been told he has to reduce movement to hold his condition in check and that means reducing his hours working as a sales agent to part-time only.
A week ago his father Daniel in Prince George launched a GoFundMe campaign to try raise money to partially cover living expenses while he undergoes treatment. As of Thursday the campaign had brought in $4,621 toward a goal of $10,000.
“Jake has been working full-time throughout, but he won't be able to work for a minimum of six months after he recovers from his skin grafts,” said Daniel McLeod, in the online post. “Starting on March 1, he’s going to drop down to part-time, both because he can’t stand for eight hours a day, but also because he has finally managed to get on disability, and he won’t be able to work full-time and still receive his (monthly) benefits. His benefits are a whopping $1,500.
“Jake has been born into a system that will let him die if we don't keep fighting for him. The government has denied all of Jake's crisis grants, so he's already struggling. Our family is working to support Jake, and we are all pitching in where we can. However, he's going to need more than what we're currently able to give him. Not all cancer medications in Canada are covered, even on disability, so this financial burden is affecting not just Jake, but our family as well.”
The UNBC Timberwolves Student Athlete Society saw McLeod’s GoFundMe post and chosen him to be their MVP of the Month and the beneficiary of their annual Fill the Bus bottle drive and dodgeball tournament.
Next weekend, March 15-16, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., the TWolves will be collecting bottles and cans to fill their bus at Art Knapp’s Plantland along Highway 16 West at 4412 Kimball Rd. The players will also be going door-to-door to collect drink containers and cash donations to help McLeod.
The dodgeball tournament is set for Sunday, March 23 from 1-5 p.m. at the Northern Sport Centre. Teams can enter the tournament for a $50 fee.
“It hits home for us, we just had our Shoot for the Cure breast cancer awareness game a couple weeks ago, and Jake is around the same age as the rest of us,” said Timberwolves women’s basketball point guard Sarah Kuklisin.
“He’s going through this incredibly awful thing and we’re just picturing what our lives would be like now if we were suffering with that.”
All four TWolves varsity teams are represented by the society, which formed 2017 to get players involved in community fundraising projects.
“It definitely feels nice to have the community on my side cheering for me and I’m hoping that things go well and hoping there’s high turnout for the bottle drive and the dodgeball,” said McLeod. “It’ll be nice to see family and people who care.”
Kuklisin says the society hopes to raise as much as they did in 2023 when they picked two-year-old Ethan Reimer as their MVP of the Month. That bottle drive brought in $4,717 and the dodgeball tournament raised $1,450.
Kuklisin, a fifth-year psychology/business major, was with the TWolves for five seasons but knee and ankle injuries limited her to 40 games over 2 ½ seasons. The fundraiser for McLeod is her last TWolves’ activity before she graduates.
She’s looking forward to meeting McLeod on the weekend of the dodgeball tournament. UNBC has arranged to pay for his flights so he can make the trip. She’s hoping more public awareness will make their efforts to help McLeod a success.
“Last year people were hearing from us on the radio and were driving in from Vanderhoof (to drop off their bottles) and that why it’s so important to make sure we get this on the news,” Kuklisin said.
