This image of Alec Oughton will be put on the recreational vehicle carrying the fathers of young cancer patients during the cross-country benefit ride. PHOTO COURTESY OF BEVERLY TOVES

The Oughtons--Crystal, Alec and children Grace and Landon--gathered for a portrait in between treatments. PHOTO COURTESY OF BEVERLY TOVES

Parents of children with rare form of cancer ride bicycles across the country to raise money for a cure

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

Date published: 8/25/2007

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

The first time he learned his 18-month-0ld daughter had cancer, Alec Oughton cried himself to sleep every night for two months.

The second time, he cried for a day.

The third, he decided to go to the top of a mountain.

When it comes to fighting Grace's neuroblastoma, Alec went back to something he learned after 14 years fighting fires: Take action.

"If you go to a fire and there's people hanging out of the window of a burning building, standing and crying won't get them out of the building," he said. "Me panicking won't help them."

But getting a ladder, putting it on the house, climbing up and bringing the people down from the fire will help.

It's a system. A logical, step-by-step system.

Surely there had to be a system that would save his now 3-year-old daughter.

There has to be a way to keep her alive for more of the good days, times when she wants to get out of bed and play with her baby dolls or eat strawberry waffles. Or get on the phone and say, "I love you, Daddy."

Doctors told Alec and his wife, Crystal, something could help. It wouldn't cure the aggressive cancer attacking Grace's body, the kind they thought she had beaten twice.

But this treatment could keep the cancer at bay and allow her to lead a more normal life.

"Or about as normal a life as you can lead with a terminal cancer," Alec said.

The treatment--3F8--is a mouse antibody that attacks a protein associated with neuroblastoma.

It kills the neuroblastoma cells without many of the harsher side effects of chemotherapy.

The mouse antibody isn't a cure, but a humanized version could help more kids, including Grace.

It would cost nearly $5 million to develop. And another $2 million each year to keep it going.

"To me, a fireman who makes $60,000 a year, it's an astronomical amount of money," Alec said. "But if 10 million people have 50 cents then we're done."

He and other dads at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City wondered how they could get that many people's attention.

"You can only have so many barbecues and so many bake sales," said Kevin Sims, who learned his daughter Syndey had neuroblastoma in 2004.

To donate: savegrace.com or loneliestroad.org

Date published: 8/25/2007