When Tim Conners collected his wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2012 at the age of 18, he was blind from childhood leukemia that had spread to his optic nerve. A football player and wrestler who’d never been an outdoorsman, he asked to meet Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb the Seven Summits – the highest mountains on seven continents.

Conners’ wish came true. He had 2½ terrifying but transformative days of outdoor adventures in Colorado with Weihenmayer, who lost his sight to a degenerative eye disorder at 13. Now, Conners is training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the 19,000-foot peak in Tanzania, shortly after he graduates from Ithaca College in May.

“In a lot of ways,” Conners, now 22, says, “losing my sight gave me my vision.”

Conners’ journey began on April 3, 2010, when he was diagnosed at the Syracuse pediatric hospital near his home with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Conners had T-cell ALL, a very aggressive subset that required intense chemotherapy to push his leukemia into remission. But it was back three months later, this time in his eyes. Surgery failed to save Conners’ sight.

He Lost His Sight to Cancer, But Not His Vision of a Full Life

PHOENIX, NY – Phoenix High School hosted the annual Oswego County Olympiad on Thursday (May 11,) allowing hundreds of exceptional student athletes the chance to participate in friendly track and field competition.

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n its third year, 22-year-old Tim Conners of Fulton, who narrowly defeated a life threatening cancer diagnosis as a teenager, kicked off the event with his inspiring opening remarks.

Speaking to the crowd of 460 student athletes, Conners spread a message of perseverance, a lesson he learned while battling for his life and even after as he discovered how to operate daily life in a sightless world.

“As you all know, we have the power in our hands to do whatever we want and we can overcome those barriers and that’s what we are here today to celebrate,” he told the young athletes.

Conners offered CiTi and all nine school districts represented a signed copy of his book, It’s Impossible Until You Do It and capped his opening statement as all 460 students repeated the title aloud.

“I believe we have the power to do anything and if you live by this, you all will have that power as well,” he said, as the group repeated the mantra in unison.

Conners will continue spreading inspiration as he plans to tackle the highest point on the African continent by summitting Mt. Kilimanjaro next month as part of a fundraiser deemed MounTimPossible.

Fulton Native Kicks Off Third Annual Oswego County Olympiad

It’s Impossbile Until You Do It by Tim Conners is a book that will provide you with the hope and action you need to succeed in your life. 

Including Tim’s journey of cancer and blindness, this book provides the reader with Tim’s proven system for succeeding in the face of adversity, and how you can experience the same success in your life.

https://www.fultonpubliclibrary.org/node/406

After nearly two years of planning, months of training, and countless hours raising funds for charity, Tim Conners was the tallest man on the African continent when he finally stood atop the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro this past weekend.

Conners, a member of the Class of 2017, lost his sight from cancer as a teenager, and endured further physical tolls as he fought the disease. He set out for Tanzania on May 22, the day after he graduated from Ithaca College. After some time volunteering at a school for the blind, Conners and his small team—led by a professional guide from the Arizona-based K2 Adventures Foundation—started up “Kili.”

This video still shows Tim Conners, center, approaching the summit of Kilimanjaro. The video was posted on the K2 Adventures Facebook page.

The plan was for nine days on the mountain, with several days of rest sprinkled into the itinerary. On June 3, K2 Adventures updated their Facebook page with an announcement that Conners and his team—which included his father and uncle—had reached the summit.

A few hours later they posted video of Conners achieving his goal.

Conners set out on this trek as a fundraiser for several organizations that were influential in his life following his cancer diagnosis. Late last year, he released his first book, “It’s Impossible Until You Do It: Succeeding in the Face of Adversity.” Sales of the part-autobiography, part-personal philosophy also went toward the fundraising effort.

https://www.ithaca.edu/ic-news/releases/recent-graduate-and-blind-cancer-survivor-summits-mount-kilimanjaro-45709/

With an amazing team of individuals, I am setting off as a blind cancer survivor the day after I graduate from college on May 22^nd to climb the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro.

In the process, my team is working on raising $500,000 for charities and organizations that not only saved my life, but gave me the strength and the tools to start living again. I realize that the amount of support I had greatly contributed to my success, and I want to make sure children facing life threatening illnesses, disability, or adversity in their lives have the same resources I had to be successful.

In addition, my team will be working two days at an orphanage in Tanzania with blind and visually impaired youth before we embark on the trek. The impact our team is trying to make globally is one in where people start living life fully, making a difference, and redefining what others see as possible.

I believe that people don’t hear you until they know you, which is why I wanted to include a little background of my story. Although it can’t capture everything I went through, I believe it can shed light on why people have decided to rally behind me in this mission to hopefully change the world.

As a 15-year-old freshman in high school, my life would change drastically with a diagnosis of t-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. From there I would experience a short-lived period of remission where eventually my cancer would not only come back, but in about 48 hours would completely take my sight away.

At that point in my life, the only chance I had for survival was a bone marrow transplant – but after a week of chemo and total body radiation, the cure had become the killer. I experienced heart, lung, and kidney failure – but the worst was a diagnosis of imminent death. Thankfully I made it through what I see as one of the darkest moments of my life, but things would never be easy.

By the time I returned home after months in the hospital, I couldn’t walk without a walker and someone holding me up from behind.  I was receiving my nutrients through IV because I was too weak to eat.  I had to spend an entire year in isolation because my immune system reset and the slightest illness could kill me.  And to top it off I was a blind individual entering into a sighted world.

Despite all of this, I broke through the limitations people placed on me – and many feel I have gone on to do the impossible.

I went on to graduate on time from high school and have now almost entirely made it through college with a rounded GPA of 3.98.

I trekked through the Grand Canyon, white water rafting down the Colorado and hiking the 9.9-mile Bright Angel Trail out. And I have traveled the country sharing my story with individuals to show them the power to achieve whatever we want in life is in our hands, not our circumstances.

I believe we can move mountains if we move them together. See you at the top.

Mission: Live Life Fully, Make a Difference, and Redefine Possible