Kate Martinez Hewat is taking to the skies to help raise money for a charity that helped support her late mother Theresa

Sky-diving for charity

Bradford on Avon woman Kate Martinez Hewat is taking to the skies to help raise money for a charity that helped support her late mother Theresa.

She’s making a sponsored sky dive on behalf of LAM Action that supports women with the incurable lung disease lymphangioleiomyomatosis (known as LAM). Theresa was diagnosed with the condition in 1992.

LAM, one of the world’s rarest diseases, only affects women, and causes cysts to form on the lungs. There are only around 120 people with the condition in the UK.

Theresa Hewat died aged 62 in December last year following a desperate 17 month struggle for life having undergone a double lung transplant at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital in July 2008.

Kate, 25, who works in Bradford on Avon’s Co Op store, will be making the 10,000 ft tandem jump above Salisbury on Friday, October 1, and aims to raise more than �1500 for LAM research.

“Mum was so brave and suffered so terribly in the last few years of her life I want to do all I can to help find a treatment for this awful disease,” said Kate.

“LAM Action is a very small charity that does an amazing job supporting LAM patients and their families and helping to fund clinical research.

“Just because LAM is incredibly rare it doesn’t mean it’s any less devastating for women who are struggling to live with it.”

Although Kate describes the thought of jumping out of a plane at 10,000 ft as “terrifying”, she says she can’t wait to take to the skies.

“I know I’m going to be scared, but once I’m up there I’m just going to think about how much money I’m raising to help get me through.

“I hope mum would have been proud of me.”

Kate was born in Bogota, Colombia in 1984 and was adopted by Theresa and husband Jonathan at 20 months.

LAM, which mainly affects the lungs, causes excessive growth of smooth muscle tissue, which progressively erodes lung function.

To find out more about LAM visit: www.lamaction.org. To sponsor Kate go to: http://www.justgiving.com/khewat