Best friends skydive to thank QEHB
Andy Burton was diagnosed with cancer of the throat in November 2018 and thanks to his incredible, life-saving care, his daughter and her two best friends are taking on a skydive to say thank you!
Andy’s daughter, Natasha, thought of skydiving to say thank you to the hospital after his life-saving treatment at the hospital, and when mentioning to her two friends, Lauren and Katie Boxall, they decided to join in with her! They will all be taking part in a tandem skydive in July this year and jumping 15,000ft out of a plane!
The unexpected diagnosis meant that Andy needed fives weeks of chemotherapy, seven weeks of radiotherapy and a neck dissection surgery in July 2019 to remove the cancer. His wife visited the hospital with him every single day during his treatment and without it, Natasha said “he wouldn’t be with us today”.
Picture: Natasha, Lauren and Katie
Natasha said: “Due to the time and help that the hospital provided to my Dad over the last year and a half, he is fit and well and with us today. The diagnosis was very unexpected and it was very upsetting to see our Dad like this.
“I had just started university in the September and found it difficult to not be at home with my family. Lauren and Katie have been very close friends of our as they’ve grown up with our family so they wanted to do something to support us too.”
The three friends together have already raised over £1,500 for the cancer wards at the hospital which will go towards providing added extras that go ‘over and above’ what the NHS can fund for patients just like Andy.
Talking about taking on the challenge with Natasha, Lauren and Katie said: “We want to raise money and awareness for QEHB Charity in support of their work which helped our good friend Andy. We can’t thank them enough, so we thought we would skydive to try!
“We wanted to do it to support Natasha but also to say thank to the QE for keeping Andy with us. It is something both of us would find challenging but exciting at the same time and to be able to do this for such a great cause is an opportunity we did not want to waste!”
The team can’t wait for their skydive and are looking forward to putting themselves outside of their comfort zone for Andy, who received the all-clear in August 2019.
You can support Natasha, Lauren and Katie in their adventure by donating to their JustGiving pages here.
If their story has inspired you take on a skydive, why not sign up for one now? Click here to sign up!
