A few years ago…

Short intro bit:

…I discovered a cancerous tumour on my tongue. It was dealt with quickly and amazingly by the consultant surgeons at Maxillofacial department in Bristol Royal Infirmary and I was supported from start to finish through the process by Macmillan Cancer Support.

I have an opportunity to say thank you to Macmillan for the amazing work they do to support people through cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery, most of whom go through a much tougher time than I did.

This is how we’re going to do it…

This week (Wed or Thurs) 5 of us are going to attempt to do more than 51 skydives in a day… that’s roughly 1 jump every 10 minutes for 10 hours with a couple of short breaks.

We’re doing it at Langar Airfield organised by Dan Guest and Josh Carret. The other jumpers are Elise Sharp, Martin Roberson and James Round.

As the day goes on I’m sure I will need motivation to keep going so what I would love for people to do is pledge a small amount of money per jump that I manage to do. This money will go direct to MacMillan and help to give families going through the trauma of cancer treatment that extra bit of help needed to deal with it…

What to do to help:

Please pledge (in a comment on this post and/or as a small donation on the JustGiving page) the amount you want to sponsor me per jump. Then when we’ve done the jumps you can donate the full amount. This will give me the motivation that I need later in the day to keep jumping when I know that one more jump will make a difference.

Longer bit:

The most jumps I’ve done in a day before is 14 so this will be quite a different experience. We will have an aircraft to ourselves and will be doing ‘Hop n Pops’ (just flying to the minimum height needed to jump and then deploy our parachutes). We will have a few parachutes each, a dedicated team of parachute packers and our own landing area right next to the runway so that we can make the 10minute turnarounds.

In the past I’ve done some quite high pressure skydiving and I love to challenge myself within the sport. I’ve been skydiving for 23 years and have over 5500 jumps. I am a skydiving instructor and camera flyer. I’ve competed at a world level in Speed Skydiving, regularly going over 300mph and have been the British record holder and the second fastest in the world ever. I’ve jumped over the Swat valley in northern Pakistan and filmed celebrities skydiving. What I love the most is working on TV, Commercial and Film shoots as a camera flyer so am used to doing jumps with a lot more added pressure than just jumping out with my friends for fun. The most recent project being Masters of the Air (part of the Band of Brothers franchise). I love the technical and challenging side of the sport and am always pushing forward to find the extent of my ability and strength.

At the time of my cancer treatment I didn’t think that I needed outside support because of the supportive family and friends around me but just knowing that MacMillan were there definitely made the whole process easier to manage. Macmillan were at the ready via email or phone for any support I needed at any time including things like counselling, physical therapy and even free tickets to fun things for me and the family. I want to help to make sure other people going through a rougher time will always have that invaluable kind support.

I was very lucky that my tumour (Squamous cell carcinoma) was caught early. All I had to have was a centimetre chunk of my tongue cut out and a neck operation (neck dissection) to remove the lymph glands on one side. I was declared clear of the cancer very quickly and now after regular checkups I am still clear of it after 3 years. My recovery was very quick and this is down to the amazing treatment I had from the team at the BRI and from the support from Macmillan. Thanks to this support I was also able to make the process an opportunity to grow. I am now trying to give my best and make the best of every moment.

See my blog about it here: https://www.michaellovemore.com/blog/categories/my-tongue

Please help me to stay motivated and do one more jump… Thank you MacMillan for being there for me and keep doing your amazing work.