The diagnosis: an aggressive form of Non-Hodgkin’s, in which something goes wrong with the formation of white blood cells. Tim: “I didn’t really know what it meant. I was actually particularly shocked by my father’s reaction, I had never actually seen him like that before.”
After a number of chemotherapy treatments in six months, Tim is now doing very well. “Almost all the cancer cells are gone, but they want to make sure none remain.” That is why he has to go to the hospital every week for about a year and a half.
He wants to play football with his team again in September. “Recently I have been training alone and participating in the warm-up during the matches.”
Auction until Thursday evening
He calls sports ‘a nice distraction’, just like the auction. Jan-Paul and Tim did not set it up alone: the father came into contact with AZ’s chef Justin van den Berg via LinkedIn. His son suffers from leukemia.
The ball started rolling through footballers from AZ and other Dutch clubs. “It went really fast, then we had all those shirts,” says Tim, with audible surprise in his voice.
A few hours before the auction opens, Jan-Paul receives a message. “We received another shirt from Mika Godts of Ajax.” Can it still be added? “I don’t think so,” Tim says in despair. “The auction is about to start.”
The online auction runs until Thursday evening 8.45 pm.
