Kelsey Timothy is convinced she will be the first to survive her disease and continues to live her life as if she doesn’t have cancer.

Timothy, 27, was diagnosed 2 1/2 years ago with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive malignant tumor in the frontal lobe of her brain. 

She was given six months to live after being diagnosed with the Stage 4 cancer.

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

“It’s the hardest but most fun two-and-a-half-minute thing you can do,” Timothy, a Flathead High School graduate, 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.”

To get aboard the Grey Matter boat, a team that has placed in its category the last two years, Timothy’s mother has a very strict requirement.

“You have to raise $200 to get on my boat,” said Betsy Funk, a Columbia Falls High School health teacher. “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 wearing 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.”

So the hefty price to climb aboard the Grey Matter boat serves a specific purpose, but Timothy is not letting the costs of living keep her down. Her life has changed so drastically since she was diagnosed at 24 that she hardly recognizes it anymore.

“It’s changed everything,” she said. “I’m much more calm now. I’ve settled down a lot. I don’t have the energy I used to have.”

Funk said before her daughter’s diagnosis, she noticed drastic mood swings. The massive tumor was pressing on the frontal lobe and the amygdala, which control decision-making and emotional reactions. 

“The only reason we even found the tumor was because Kelsey fell and hit her head,” Funk said. “She went and got a CT scan and doctors recommended she get an MRI. Since the tumor was resected, she said she feels so even.”

Her neurosurgeon, Thomas Origitano, has been a godsend for their family, Funk said. 

“Coming from a huge city, there’s so much distance between a surgeon and a patient,” he said. “But in a smaller community, where you might see patients in a social setting, you are reminded every day how fortunate patients are who outlive their diagnosis. Kelsey’s story is humbling and inspiring.”

The resection, or surgical removal, of the tumor, left Timothy with a malformed skull. Her partner, Derrick Whitby, doesn’t seem to mind. 

He has been with her through the entire ordeal. Funk said Whitby helped Timothy shave her head and held her when chemotherapy didn’t allow her to keep her food down.

But other support has been dramatic as well. Timothy was working at Whitefish’s Montana Coffee Traders when she got the call.

“I picked up the work phone and was told I have a brain tumor,” she said. “They allowed me to continue working. I’m so lucky I was working here.”

Timothy, wracked with chemotherapy, losing her hair and vomiting more often than she would like to recall, wanted to continue working so she asked to work in the back.

Her other duties didn’t cease either. 

“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.”

Funk tells a story of her daughter coaching the 11-year-olds when one particularly precocious one asked if she had cancer.

“She told her yes, I have brain cancer,” Funk said. “The girl said OK, let’s go out and win today.”

They did.

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 [in Waterton Lakes National Park]. Maybe not everything is in the cards, but she is such an inspiration.”

The two-year benchmark has come and gone and she 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.”

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.