ITHACA — Tim Conners, the Fulton native whose battle against cancer spurred a campaign to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in support of multiple charities, has released his first book chronicling his inspirational journey.

Conners, 22, was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic lymphoma in 2010 during his freshman year of high school. The disease would take his sight, and the grueling treatment isolated him from all but his closest family as his immune system recovered.

But Conners refused to give up — he beat his cancer, and in so doing gained a perspective on life he felt was his privilege and duty to share.

Conners will graduate this spring from Ithaca College with a degree in Communication Studies and has spent the last few years cris-crossing the United States as a featured speaker at conferences and symposiums.

“Ever since everything I’ve faced, people have joked around and said I should write a book and I always thought, ‘yeah, I’ll do that,’ but never did,” Conners said.

With his busy schedule as a motivational speaker and full-time student, work on the project came in fits and starts, but in the late summer, he was finally able to concentrate his efforts on crafting his story.

“I took what I had learned in my life about accomplishing what I wanted, and I decided I didn’t want my book to be talk anymore. I was going to do it,” Conners said.

Earlier this month, Conners released that book, entitled “It’s Impossible Until You Do It,” which tells his story and lays out his unique philosophy from a life steeped in challenges and hope.

Conners said the book contains what he calls “enlightening tools to overcome adversity and be successful, no matter what that is.”

“It’s important for people to read it and reflect and take a different outlook on how they see their world,” Conners added.

Throughout his travels, Conners developed his ambitious plan to raise funds and awareness for five organizations he says helped him through his recovery to support other battling similar circumstances.

One of Conners’ mentors has been Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to climb Mount Everest. While spending time with Weihenmayer, Conners came up with his own plan — to summit Africa’s highest peak.

He founded the MounTimPossible, his fundraising organization dedicated to what he calls “The Mission” — traveling to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The journey is planned for next summer and will no doubt be arduous, but with all Conners has overcome in the past, it’s unlikely anything will stand in his way.

“I knew I wanted to include my story of overcoming cancer,” said Conners about writing the book. “I knew I wanted to include information people could apply to their lives that I learned firsthand worked; and I knew I wanted most of all to create something that was going to help people all over the world in their lives so they could overcome their own challenges.”

Conners will donate portions of the proceeds from his book, along with other sustained fundraising efforts “The Mission” will generate exposure for, to The Make-A-Wish Foundation, Golisano Children’s Hospital, No Barriers, The Joe Andruzzi Foundation and Michael Napoleone Memorial Foundation.

“It’s Impossible Until You Do It” is self-published by Conners and his family and available for purchase on Amazon.com.

For more information about Tim and the organizations his Mount Kilimanjaro odyssey seeks to support, visit www.mountimpossible.com.

http://www.oswegocountynewsnow.com/news/fulton-native-pens-book-on-overcoming-adversity/article_8d6570d2-c7ce-11e6-afa4-5f8f96c36604.html

SYRACUSE, NY – Aurora of CNY, Inc. presented its Excellence Awards recently at its annual meeting at the Mulroy Civic Center in Syracuse.

Nasser Fitwi: Blind since he was eight years old, Fitwi came to Syracuse almost two years ago from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Without the help of any vision at all, he had to learn his way around and adjust to a new culture, country and climate. Aurora helped with mobility training, assistive devices such as tape recorders, and advice on handling the reams of paperwork that face a new immigrant. Fitwi learned quickly and now he is working to give back and help others. At Aurora he tutors consumers in English as a Second Language. He lives in Syracuse.

Timothy Conners: Conners, an 11th-grader at G. Ray Bodley High School in Fulton, says he’s up for the challenge of dealing with both cancer and blindness. It’s a relatively new challenge for him. He became legally blind just over a year ago due to the cancer, and he had a bone marrow transplant last year. Conners is still a member of G. Ray Bodley’s varsity football team, and wears his jersey when he goes to games to root for his team. Conners, who lives in Fulton, said he plans to attend college after graduation.

Lindsay Ryan Anthony: Anthony, who has been deaf all of her life, has a long history with Aurora. She worked in Aurora’s Summer Education Program and then joined Aurora’s Deaf Employment Services staff. During her time at Aurora, Anthony held lunchtime sign language classes for staff, took part in the agency’s Deaf Awareness Week activities, and was always willing to do whatever was necessary to represent Aurora and educate the community about deaf culture. Anthony is a member of the Deaf Advocacy Council of Central New York and now works for Project Emerge, a collaboration between Arise and Vera House, where she advocates for people with disabilities who experience domestic and sexual abuse. Anthony lives in Syracuse.

Fulton Teen, Oswego Woman Among Aurora’s Excellence Awards Winners

Fulton, N.Y. — The best game of Tim Conners’ senior year at G. Ray Bodley High School in Fulton was one his football team lost.

Conners – six- feet- two -inches tall and 220 pounds – played center, snapping the ball only three times. Fulton drove 60 yards on those plays.

“You could just hear everybody yelling and screaming. The whistles were blowing,” Conners said.

But he couldn’t see a thing.

The 18-year-old Fulton teen lost his sight to cancer in 2010. That football game, which Fulton lost 35 to 7 to Nottingham High, was his first time back on the field. The coaches from both teams worked it out ahead of time: no one would touch Conners.

Conners didn’t get to play in a game again. But today, he will graduate with the rest of his class. He is ranked seventh. When he takes that diploma in his hand, it will be more than an affirmation that he’s a high school graduate. It is a victory against a cancer that at one point had his family gathered around him, saying their last I love yous.

When Conners was 15, he struggled with what a doctor first thought were sinus infections. Then he started having other strange symptoms: half of his face was paralyzed when he had his wisdom teeth removed. On April 3, 2010, doctors found a tumor the size of a football in his chest. He had his first round of chemotherapy that same day.

Chemo had that cancer under control within months, but in July 2010, Conners found out the cancer was back and had spread to his optic nerve. He’d been seeing strange shadows for a while.

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2013/06/cancer_took_teens_sight_but_no.html

The darkness began to settle in, seeping into the left periphery of his vision like a rolling fog, resembling a crescent slowly travelling across his view.

He grasped his mother’s face, clinging onto the last straws of cloudy vision.

“If I lose my vision completely, I want your face to be the last beautiful thing I may ever see.”

Then, he was wheeled away into eye surgery on July 15, 2010, and when he woke up, the crescent had become a full moon.

—

“Your son has leukemia,” Dr. Irene Cherrick said. “He has a mass the size of a football in his chest. I don’t have time to talk to you anymore — I have to go save your child, and Dr. Trust is going to explain everything to you.”

At 2 p.m. April 3, 2010, the parents of then-14-year-old Tim Conners had just had the air punched out of them. A sudden announcement like that, after being kept in the dark amid a scurry of activity the entire morning, had them sitting in the room on the 12th floor of Golisano Children’s Hospital in Syracuse, New York, with more questions than answers as Dr. Stewart Trust calmly explained to them the ramifications of Tim’s T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

ALL — a quickly developing type of blood cancer, hence termed “acute” — grows in the lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, which are found in the soft part of the inner bone. The cancer attacks by invading the blood and spreading to the body’s vital organs such as the liver and spleen, having a fatal effect within a few short months if left untreated. When caught early, survival rates for adolescents with ALL typically stand around 72 percent. Tim’s variation, T-cell ALL, accounts for 15–25 percent of all cases of ALL in children and adults.

https://theithacan.org/news/the-vision-i-have/

A short doc exploring the obstacles a student at Ithaca College had to overcome after battling Leukemia and losing his eyesight. This story delves into the life of Tim Conners, a man who has persevered and has created a new perspective on life and his future. He may have lost his sight, but he states that he has gained his vision and is capable of seeing the world in a whole new light.