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Grace's memory lives on through foundation

Grace Oughton Cancer Foundation continues, offers support to other families

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

Date published: 6/3/2008

By Flowers Umble

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

For nearly two years, Crystal Oughton craved a normal life.

Now, she would trade in every peaceful second of housework, routine and school drop-offs for nights interrupted by beeping machines and nurses, days filled with IVs and side effects, and weeks measured by the gossip at the playroom of the pediatric cancer ward at New York City's Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital.

The chaos would mean she still had her daughter, Grace, who died Oct. 29. She was 3 years old.

For two years prior, Crystal, husband Alec and their son, Landon, were allies in their daughter's battle with neuroblastoma, an aggressive form of cancer that usually appears in infants and toddlers.

It showed up in Grace's body when she was 19-months old. Just after her diagnosis in January 2006, a doctor sat down with Crystal and Alec and said, "If this is the worst-case scenario, you need to know you did everything."

Those words sent the Oughtons on a two-year journey from their Caroline County home to Boston and New York, while they tried any treatment that could save Grace's life.

Alec, a firefighter for Henrico County, traveled back and forth between "the hidden world" of cancer wards and the fire station in Virginia. Landon often stayed with grandparents, so he could attend preschool and kindergarten.

When Alec and Crystal first rushed Grace to Boston, friends immediately recognized the family would need money. They raised $10,000 in the first three days.

Over the next two years, Alec and Crystal lost a lot of sleep: when side effects kept Grace up past 3 a.m., when mothers called in the middle of the night to announce another fellow cancer patient had died, when the routine of the oncology ward was too loud for sleep.

Sometimes, Alec said, they'd wake up worrying about money. But the donations eased their minds.

They no longer have to worry about how to supplement Crystal's salary while she's taking care of Grace or how to afford the gas to get Alec back to work.

Now, Alec and Crystal hope the Grace Oughton Cancer Foundation will help other families.

The nonprofit foundation has changed its focus from helping the Oughtons to helping others. It gives money to pediatric cancer education and research. It also helps families through grants.

WHAT: Golf Tournament WHEN: June 14, 8 a.m. WHERE: Pendleton Golf Course, Ladysmith HOW: Print out registration form at savegrace.com or call 804/873-2067 for details WHY: To help the Grace Oughton Cancer Foundation DETAILS: Entry costs $100 per golfer and includes breakfast and lunch; 18 holes of golf; gift bags with golf ball, golf shirt and other goodies; prizes and more Neuroblastoma is an aggressive cancer that usually begins in the nerve tissue of infants and toddlers. In the United States, about 600 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year, said Suzanne Shusterman, a pediatric oncologist at the Children's Hospital of Boston. There are many different types of neuroblastoma. Half of those, like the one Grace had, are high risk.

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Date published: 6/3/2008