By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
FOR an Endeavour Hills-based charity, the 42-kilometre Melbourne Marathon is a personal mission to find a cure to a cruel childhood cancer.
Khush Harris is one of more than 185 runners joining as a team for her charity Isabella and Marcus Paediatric Brainstem Tumour Fund for next month’s event.
In 2008, Ms Harris’s six-year-old daughter Isabella died just six months after being diagnosed with the brainstem tumour , also called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
There is no cure for the degenerative disease, which occurs mainly in children aged 5-9. Most die within a year of diagnosis, having rapidly lost their ability to walk, talk and feed.
“It’s a nasty way to die,” Ms Harris said. “They remain ‘locked in’ and it’s extremely scary for them. A lot of families have gone through the most horrendous time. In the last stages, you actually want your child to die.”
Mr Harris wants to involve more than 200 runners from Greater Dandenong and Casey into the team with the aim of funding a Melbourne-based research unit to study DIPG.
She and husband Robert De Rose founded a charity in 2010 to treat the disease with another bereaved couple, Daniela and Tony Ruberto whose five-year-old son Marcus also died from DIPG.
Their hope is to raise $5 million for a world-class, permanent laboratory that will study the disease. So far, the charity has raised $160,000.
Ms Harris wants the unit to be based in the under-construction Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Parkville.
The centre’s patron is Education Minister Martin Dixon and its ambassador is star basketballer Andrew Bogut, who attended Thomas Mitchell Primary School in Endeavour Hills, the same school as Isabella. Many of the teachers from the school will take part in the marathon.
The event on October 14 comprises a three-kilometre walk, runs of 5.7 kilometres and 10 kilometres as well as the 42-kilometre marathon.
To register for the team go to isabellaandmarcusfund.org.au/melbourne-marathon.html. If you’ve already entered the event, join the team by emailing enquiries@melbournemarathon.com.au and quote the password ‘dreamteam’.
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