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Son's Fight For Life An Inspiration

Family photo

Gustavo Davila, right, won't allow his son Alex's passing be in vain.

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By DONNA KOEHN

dkoehn@tampatrib.com

Published: November 15, 2008

TAMPA - This father's tragedy started, as so many do, with the mundane.

His boy, a handsome and well-built athlete, injured his arm playing soccer in his native Ecuador. Alex, 15, was tough, but the pain wouldn't go away, and it got worse.

A doctor delivered the news: osteosarcoma, a rare and deadly bone cancer that most often strikes between the ages of 10 and 20, during the time of growth spurts. The arm would have to be amputated at once.

Gustavo Davila, a salesman of bathroom fixtures, asked the doctor what he would do if it were his son. The doctor replied that he would find the best hospital in the world.

Father and son boarded a plane to the United States. One facility turned them away outright, providing only a ticket back to Ecuador. Another started an I.V. with morphine, then removed it when Davila confessed he had no insurance.

Beloved By All

Finally, Davila and Alex, in excruciating pain, found their way to H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, which offered a bed.

Soon, Alex became a hospital favorite, a polite young man at a facility more accustomed to older patients. Moffitt treats only two or three pediatric sarcoma patients a year.

Everyone who worked with Alex fell in love with him, says his doctor and sarcoma specialist, Douglas Letson. Even Letson's children took an interest in the young man with his broken English and an attitude inexplicably upbeat.

Alex and his father knew how lucky they were. Each time they traveled back to Ecuador, Alex insisted they take clothing and supplies to help children with cancer.

Many people there think the disease is contagious, so parents hide their sick children away and await their death. Other children work on farms to earn the money for chemotherapy, returning to the fields the next day, weak and nauseated, to begin earning money for their next treatment.

Alex did what he could for them until his body could take no more. His arm and shoulder were amputated. Then doctors found tumors in both lungs.

The boy wanted to go home to die. He tried, but passed out before he could board his commercial flight. I am a failure, he told his father.

Davila would not have it. He told his son he would charter a plane. That was absurd, Alex said, only artists and NBA players and Shakira traveled that way. But the Moffitt Foundation provided part of the cost. Davila continues to pay off the rest. He would do it again. Alex died surrounded by his family in Quito, Ecuador, in August 2006.

His son was a hero, Davila believed. So his son's work would go on.

Center Offers Support

At Jovenes Contra El Cancer Fundacion, 51 Ecuadorian young people have come together, no longer hiding in shame, to attend support groups, surf the Net, sip coffee.

They create Barbie doll dresses from toilet paper, selling them for $7 to raise money. They learn to give speeches and eat healthy meals. The foundation finds them clerical work or jobs taking tickets at the local cinema - easier ways to earn money for chemo than sweating in the fields.

Davila is their surrogate father; he sees Alex in them all.

When a father has a sick son, he protects and embraces that son, he explains. He knows the children understand that.

The foundation also gives the young people a place to scream or rail at the fates - and a place for them to smile and gain energy.

However, the bathroom fixture salesman is not done.

Last month, at his invitation, physicians from across South America traveled to the Universidad San Francisco in Quito to learn about sarcoma. Letson and other specialists from the United States spoke to the group. A representative of Moffitt's fundraising foundation also met with businesspeople and marketing students about their responsibility to help fund treatment for those who can't afford it, a concept largely unfamiliar in Ecuador.

Davila speaks only a few words of English, but his message, delivered through an interpreter, is this:

"Young people in the United States sometimes throw up because of alcohol or drug use and worry about getting a new car or cell phone. Young people in my country throw up from chemo and worry about getting 25 cents for bus fare to the hospital for chemotherapy.

"It is important to appreciate what you have."

Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264.

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