One Prince George family experienced a little sweet charity this weekend, after a cupcake fundraiser raised more than $1,600 to support 14-year-old Jake McLeod's treatment for a rare and incurable form of cancer.
Jake suffers from a condition that causes desmoid tumours to form in his leg.
"In four months be grew a softball-size tumour in his calf, a golf ball-size tumour behind his knee and several smaller ones. It's a very aggressive, incurable condition," his mother, Carrie McLeod, said. "This is so rare there is no normal medical treatment plan for it. He's only the fifth kid in the history of [B.C.] Children's Hospital to be diagnosed with this."
Jake was diagnosed in February, after multiple trips to Vancouver for treatment. While desmoid tumours don't metastasize like most cancers, they grow aggressively and can cause health complications.
"It will continue to effect his body until we find a cure. The tumours can have complications. [And] the side effects of the meds are not nice," McLeod said. "His medications are $2,200 a week."
Although some of his medications are covered by the B.C. Cancer Agency and her husband's health insurance, some of the costs fall on the McLeod's to cover. In addition, Jake has special dietary conditions.
"I'm on disability for my own condition, so we're doing this on my husband's income. God, it gets expensive..." McLeod said. "[But] despite what is going on, we're trying to make things as normal as possible for him. It's a sad situation, but we're not sad people. We can't change what has now happened, we can only deal with it with grace and dignity."
With good pain management, Jake still plays football, gets good grades at school and is planning for his future.
"I'm a normal teenager," he said. "I'm hoping to become a carpenter or something in the trades. That's what I really enjoy doing."
McLeod said her family has managed because of the support of the community.
"People have been phenomenal," she said. "The community support has made this doable."
Some of that community support has come from Bites of Bliss Cakery owner Cindy Klassen, who donated all the proceeds from a special cupcake sold through her store last month to the McLeods.
"Every month we take on a charity cupcake. Most months we do $150, maybe a little more," Klassen said. "Normally it's a dollar from each cupcake, but I thought we need to do better, why don't we the [whole] $2.75 for the cupcake?"
The response was extraordinary, she said.
Shhh... Home and Gift and Nancy O's restaurant bought trays of cupcakes and sold them in their locations, she said.
"I first thought if we did $500, I'd be happy. Then we reached a thousands, and I thought, 'let's try for $1,500,'" Klassen said.
On Friday, she was just short of reaching the $1,500 at closing, so Klassen took a tray of cupcakes into the lobby of the Coast Inn of the North, where her store is located, in a last-minute effort to make the target.
After selling a couple of cupcakes, one woman listened to Klassen's pitch about the McLeod's situation, pulled $100 from her purse and bought the rest of the tray, she said.
"I lost it right there in the lobby," Klassen said.
"I'd give [the McLeod's] a $1,000 myself if I had it, a lot of people would. But everybody has $2.75," she said.
