You will fall at about 120 mph, descending to 5,000 feet in around 40 seconds

The sponsor forms are with your instructor.  You can also sponsor me online on my JustGiving page.

The message below is from Kitty’s Mum and Dad.

Gary and the team at Minakami Bushido Karate have blown us away with their amazingly brave idea to do a sponsored parachute jump and raise money for the NeST charity, for which our Kitty is associated with… Please, please sponsor them, and help Kitty and the other children out there with Nephrotic Syndrome / Kidney Disease.

Kitty has been with the Abbots Langley Dojo since she was 4, and loves her karate. Those that know her will have noticed she’s not been around much as sadly a couple of days before her 7th birthday she was diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome, the cause of which is unknown.

NeST is the Nephrotic Syndrome Trust, that funds research completed by Bristol University Hospital in to all forms of NS, they work closely with centres around the world and provide much needed support for the patients and families. Because it is a rare disease, and ultimately not enough people die from NS, there isn’t much in the way of NHS funding or drug company research. Most of the treatments out there are happy accidents from drugs used to treat other auto immune diseases like arthritis. In NS the immune system attacks the kidneys, Kitty’s has failed to respond to standard treatments, so we took her to Great Ormond Street, who performed a biopsy on her kidney which showed she has a rare aggressive form of NS, called Focal Segmental Glomeruli Sclerosis (FSGS). FSGS is sometimes treatable, but not curable, it is a chronic disease and ultimately unless the right treatment can be found, it will lead to kidney failure. That may not be the end, because the underlying cause is unknown the FSGS can come back in the transplanted kidney sometimes within hours.

Kitty has had to take a range of really foul medicines and chemo for 8 months trying to put her in to remission, none of which have worked yet, and have left her with virtually no immune system. Chicken pox can land her in hospital for weeks, and worse, but we are hopeful that by funding research a cause and ultimately a cure can be found.

As a parent, this isn’t the rosy happy future we envisioned for Kitty, and the sadness felt at the loss of all she could have become and done, if not for this vicious and painful disease is devastating. Literally Kitty is one in a million.

Lets hope that Gary can complete one Kata in free-fall – Good Luck.

Thank you. Chris & Debbie