Cancer Survivor Record Jump

[jetfuelbabe 0]

Just wondering.....has anyone heard if the record attempts at Skydive Spaceland were successful?

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[HRHSkyPrincess 0]

I haven't heard anything yet, but I do know the organizer, Tony Albano, will now go by the moniker Tony "Capt. Picard" Albano because he volunteered to get his head shaved to raise money for bone marrow testing!! Several folks involved in the CSWR did it this week and I'm damn proud to say I know and love them for it!! Expect a kiss, Jean Luc....on top of the newly bald pate. :)

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Attitude is everything!

[Luminous 0]

They broke the old record by 2.

I believe it's 20 now.

'In an insane society a sane person seems insane.' Mr. Spock

[flyer299 0]

Sorry, I must be out of the loop, what is the record they are going for?

[gemini 0]

The new record is 18. The Cancer Survivors started with 24, but had to make a few adjustments in order to hold the formation. Jump experience varied dramatically and not all participants were on the successful record attempt.

Congrats to the new world record holders. AND they raised $8,000 in addition.

Blue skies,

Jim

[wmw999 2,447]

Yup, they really rock! flyangel2 and homer were both on the load, too.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[gemini 0]

May 4, 2003, 6:18PM

Sky divers, having beaten cancer, jump for joy
By JEANNIE KEVER
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Less than three years ago, Alisha Carsten drew up a list of things to do before she died.

No. 1: Sky-dive.

So last week, she shimmied into a blue-and-black suit, slipped on her parachute and joined two dozen other cancer survivors for a series of jumps.

By then, Carsten had leapt out of an airplane almost 200 times, but this time would be special, jumps made in the company of people with little in common except the big stuff.

Lymphoma. Melanoma. Testicular cancer. Breast cancer. And a willingness to tempt fate once more.

It is an exclusive fraternity, bound by tumors and chemotherapy as well as terminal velocity and free falls.

"Sky diving is its own world," said Carsten, 28, an assistant vice president at Royal Oaks Bank in west Houston. "Cancer is its own world. To find someone you can share both with is unbelievable.

"We don't do it because we want to die. We do it because we want to live."

The group gathered last week at Skydive Spaceland in Rosharon, about 30 miles south of Houston, in an attempt to break the record it had set in San Marcos last spring.

Carsten was at that initial gathering, when members of a group called Leap of Faith, made up of sky divers who have survived cancer, linked 16 cancer survivors in formation. This year's event drew 27 people.

The idea of setting a record -- the most cancer survivors briefly linked in those death-defying moments between jumping out of an airplane and deploying their parachutes -- was more an emotional goal than a big achievement by sky-diving standards, since other records have involved hundreds of divers.

Still, it was important.

"It's about hope," said Tony Albano, a 23-year survivor of large-cell lymphoma and the group's founder.

Albano, who lives in Cedar Park near Austin, was inspired after serving as a volunteer interpreter for a group of deaf sky divers; he kicked things off with a notice in a sky-diving magazine more than a year ago.

Carsten was among those answering the call.

When her stomach began giving her trouble three years ago, she had shrugged it off. As a newborn, she had pyloric stenosis, a digestive illness that requires surgery. In her early teens, she developed bleeding ulcers.

Now a single mother, she assumed this was more of the same, refusing to worry even after doctors found a malignant tumor in her stomach and referred her to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

"I was, `I'm 25. I can't have cancer at 25. That's something old people get, or men.' "

Surgery and two grueling rounds of chemotherapy alternating with radiation convinced her otherwise.

And seeing children with cancer who were the same ages as her own sons, then 2 and 5, gave her a new appreciation for her life, even as she went into remission and later when a routine exam revealed early-stage cervical cancer. (It was removed surgically last fall.)

Less than two months after completing treatment for stomach cancer, Carsten tackled the first entry on her new to-do list.

She learned to sky dive.

Her life is different now -- she ultimately gave custody of her children to their father, and her brief second marriage recently broke up -- but that's OK.

"Having cancer, although it was very difficult, has changed my life in so many ways for the better," she said. "I would never go back to the person I was. "The trees are greener. The flowers are prettier."


Knowing there's hope
The skydivers arrived in Rosharon Wednesday morning to find fog hugging the ground and the threat of thunderstorms looming.

Not good diving weather.

As television cameras rolled, seven sky divers had their heads shaved, a reminder of their days in chemo.

"Bored sky divers," sighed Henry Butler, 50, a mechanical engineer from Houston and a 29-year survivor of Hodgkin's disease. "It's really dangerous, man."

But it was for a good cause. The shaved heads were part of a promotion that, together with the sky-diving stunts, raised $8,000 to pay for bone marrow donor screenings for the Caitlin Raymond International Registry in Worcester, Mass.


Albano, his head freshly shaved, bustled around as people talked of dives and experimental therapies.

Albano, 47, gave up sky diving in 1980, selling his gear to pay for chemotherapy at M.D. Anderson. He married, had two children and started his own business, Just in Time Promotions.

Five years ago, he began diving again. And he began thinking about hope.

"If I had seen this when I was going through cancer, a group of people doing what they enjoyed and they were all survivors, that would have given me so much hope," he said. "(I thought) cancer was a death sentence. Yeah, people die of cancer, but there are tons of survivors."

Like Carsten, he has been struck by the bond that united this group.

"We're a tightknit family," he said. "To be a sky diver and also have the bond that you went through chemotherapy, all your hair fell out, doctors said you were going to die, that bond is way strong."


Risk, in many forms
Throughout the early morning, Harry Hopkins laid his plans.

Hopkins, 55, and, with 7,300 jumps, the most experienced diver of the group, was the load organizer, who determines how the formation will work.

He planned to use two planes, with people dropping out in carefully orchestrated order at 14,000 feet -- 2.65 miles above the earth. Accelerating to 120 mph, the divers hoped to come together briefly, with five people linking hands to form the base and the others swooping in to take their own positions, before deploying their parachutes at 5,500 feet.

Two other divers, volunteers who haven't had cancer, would record the effort on video cameras mounted in their helmets.

Hopkins, a remodeler who lives in Lockhart, has had numerous skin cancers, a mild form of the disease compared to most of the others in the group but enough to grant him membership.

"A lot of people look at sky diving as a dangerous sport, and it is," he said. "But it's not the reason we jump."

So why do it?

"Well," he paused. "I suppose the risk element is one reason. I never think of an accident or death when I jump. It's just fun to work with people."

With that, he called the group together for the first "dirt dive," a practice dive performed on the ground.

Shelley Chetty of the American Cancer Society's Houston office rubbed sunscreen onto the newly shaved heads, and the group climbed aboard the planes, leaving a handful of spectators behind as the engines roared into the distance, the scent of airplane fuel lingering in the air.

Ten minutes later, Hopkins eyed the divers in the front plane, noticing who was relaxed and who was jumping with adrenaline. This first try, he knew, was unlikely to work.

It didn't.

From the ground, people watched as a few specks appeared in the sky, sprouting brightly colored parachutes and drifting to a green field dotted with wildflowers.

"We had problems," Hopkins said tersely as he strode off to repack his parachute and review the video.


Making the cut
The second attempt went better, and spirits were high as divers grabbed sandwiches in the snack bar and crowded around a widescreen television to watch the video.

Hopkins was in a difficult position because this wasn't a typical dive. Still, everyone knew that at some point he would begin cutting people he didn't think could make it.

He had people like Butler, with more than 2,900 dives to his credit, as well as people like Scott Petersen of Kennewick, Wash., with fewer than 170.

But this event was important to Petersen, 24, who was diagnosed with metastatic testicular cancer in December 1999, as a paratrooper with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, and to the other relative newcomers.

Hopkins wanted everyone to succeed. The third attempt would again include everybody.

But the weather refused to cooperate. The clouds hung low for hours, refusing to break for a clear diving field. People watched sky-diving videos or gathered at picnic tables outside to smoke cigarettes.

No one had traveled farther to be here than Sylv Radcliffe, 50, who came from Manchester, England.

Radcliffe, who had breast cancer, first sky-dived as a fund-raising stunt for a local hospital five years ago. "I got hooked, and I haven't stopped," she said. "It's a relaxed, beautiful feeling, being in free fall."

She was in San Marcos last year but was cut before the record-setting jump. She hoped this year would be different.


Getting lined up
Finally, the clouds broke.

The third attempt went well, and Hopkins was optimistic that the fourth and final attempt of the day would be the one.

If so, it would be without Larry Fojt.

Fojt pulled himself from the lineup, acknowledging the lingering effects of the chemotherapy he received two years ago, combined with surgery just six weeks earlier to remove a benign tumor from his sinus cavity.

"I'm tuckered out," he said.

The 58-year-old Fojt, who lives in southern Montgomery County, was diagnosed in August 1999, with stage 4 mantle cell lymphoma.

Given six months to live, he underwent an experimental regimen of chemotherapy and later was declared in remission. But the side effects remain and, fearing he would keep the group from its goal, he dropped out.

The fourth attempt was a washout, as were the first three dives on Thursday.

Time was running out.

By 4:30 p.m., the group had been winnowed to 18 divers.

Carsten and Petersen, among the less experienced, were still in. Radcliffe was out. She was disappointed but by then everyone was anxious to see the record set.

The planes climbed to 14,000 feet, and divers began sliding out the cargo doors.

In less than a minute, they were linked.

"Everybody lit up," Carsten reported. "We knew everybody was in. Everybody was smiling and making faces for the camera."

Their mission accomplished, they broke apart and pulled their parachute cords to complete their journeys.

Time for Carsten to move on to the second entry on her to-do list.

"I guess I'm going to have to make a trip to France and spit off the Eiffel Tower."

Houston Chronicle

Blue skies,

Jim

[greenlightgirl 0]

I was part of the Cancer Survivor "Leap of Faith" skydiving team, and yes, we were successful. We broke last year's record of 16, and now have 18. We began with 26. But even more important, we raised $8,000 for bone marrow testing and got our message out that there is life after cancer. It was a great time and so wonderful to see everyone again. I am really looking forward to it last time! Thanks for checking in on us, we all appreciate it. Of course, if anyone out there would like to donate, please visit our website: leap--of--faith.com. There is life after cancer!

Blue Skies

Alisha "Allie" Carsten