EVEN a 15,000 foot drop did not scare cancer survivor Sandra McGlone.

The dance-loving mum from Taw Hill said she felt no fear as she threw herself out of an aeroplane over the Wiltshire countryside.

Sandra McGlone, who turned 50 at the end of August, made the skydive in aid of Brighter Futures.

The Swindon-based charity needs to raise £2.9m to help kit out a new cancer-busting radiotherapy treatment centre at Great Western Hospital.

Sandra was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2016 – after a lump was found during a regular check-up in the last weeks of the previous year.

She said: “I had to go through Christmas not knowing if it would be my last.”

The Taw Hill mum-of-two was working in Gloucester at the time as a senior representative for cosmetics giant Avon.

Sandra elected to have her chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment in hospital at Cheltenham – taking the brave decision to have treatment on her already draining commute home from work.

“Most people go to Oxford,” Sandra said. “But I chose Cheltenham, as it meant I could work a full day and then at half-past-three or four o’clock I could go to my treatment.”

Keen dancer Sandra faced down her final chemotherapy appointment wearing a black tutu and ballet shoes.

Happily, Sandra was given the all clear – and told that doctors had defeated the cancer.

But the experience left Sandra keen to do her bit to get a radiotherapy unit built in Swindon.

She said: “People can have their treatment close to home when they’re at the lowest point in their lives.”

She added that bus and taxi costs can prove expensive to those travelling for regular treatment: “The therapy doesn’t just take its toll on your body, it takes a financial toll. I could drive myself to hospital, but a lot of people can’t.”

Lying in bed one night, she decided that she would take on a parachute jump - and raise as much money as she could in the process.

On August 31, she was flown from an airfield near Salisbury with eight others. She surprised herself with her calm, Sandra said.

“It was amazing, I wasn’t nervous at all,” she said.

“I was so calm and so chilled out – it was brilliant.

“As I was hanging over the edge of the plane my heart wasn’t pounding at all.”

Having come so close to death in her hospital bed, Sandra was sanguine about the risks. “I thought, ‘if I’m going to die, at least I was strapped to a gorgeous chap’.”

After leaping from the plane, Sandra and her instructor spent 60 seconds in freefall – and then another seven minutes floating to the ground beneath a large parachute.

The eight minutes in the air raised £900 for Brighter Futures.

Almost £1.8m has already been raised by the appeal. To donate to Brighter Futures, visit brighterfuturesgwh.nhs.uk or call 01793 605631.