Still soaring: South Ogden woman, CF survivor celebrates 40th birthday by skydiving
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- Kara Fierro, a cystic fibrosis survivor and double-lung transplant recipient, goes skydiving for her 40th birthday.
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- Kara Fierro, a cystic fibrosis survivor and double-lung transplant recipient, goes skydiving for her 40th birthday.
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- Kara Fierro, a cystic fibrosis survivor and double-lung transplant recipient, goes skydiving for her 40th birthday.
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- Kara Fierro, a cystic fibrosis survivor and double-lung transplant recipient, goes skydiving for her 40th birthday.
OGDEN — Kara Fierro has been defying odds her whole life. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an infant, doctors didn’t expect that she would survive to age 10.
This month, she celebrated her 40th birthday and, in the interim, she has offset health scares, countless hospital stays, out-of-state doctors’ appointments and a double-lung transplant with a nursing career, a loving marriage and a yearning to use the time she has been given to see and experience everything she can.
Fierro has backpacked through Europe, swam with sharks, appeared on “The Price is Right,” become an aerial dancer, hiked Angels Landing with a broken foot (and an oxygen tank at her side) and experienced myriad other adventures. Over the weekend, she checked skydiving off the list.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and it’s always been on my bucket list,” Fierro told the Standard-Examiner. “When I turned 18, I asked my CF doctor if I could go skydiving and he said, ‘Absolutely not. There’s way too high risk of a pneumothorax,’ which is a collapsed lung. I figured, OK, I’ll just put that at the bottom of my list of things to do and do other things before that.”
While she put her skydiving plans on hold, a pneumothorax ended up occurring anyway as a result of coughing when she was 29. Fierro was finally given the go-ahead to fulfill her dream after getting her new lungs.
“When I asked my transplant doctors the same question, they said, ‘Yeah, your lungs are perfectly normal now. They’re like everybody else’s lungs,'” Fierro said. “The only risk for skydiving is the inherent risk that everybody who goes skydiving has.”
So, given that inherent risk — and the long road she traveled to get to that first jump — how did Fierro feel when she finally took the plunge from 12,000 feet?
“It was exciting for me,” Fierro said. “We dangled our feet off the plane for a few seconds and I just looked down and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ And then we jumped and I had no fear. I wasn’t scared going into it because I figured that if your first parachute didn’t open, then they would have a backup parachute. So, I wasn’t frightened about that at all. I was just excited.”
Belinda Fierro — the grandmother who raised her — was less at ease but has learned that her granddaughter won’t be deterred.
“I was terrified. I’m glad I didn’t eat breakfast that morning,” Belinda Fierro said with a laugh. “It’s been fun watching her these past three years with her new lungs. It really has been phenomenal because the first year was rough. The first year she was questioning, ‘What in the hell did I go do?’ She was having a hard time letting go of the oxygen tanks and having a new life. She didn’t quite know what to do with that. But boy, has she taken that and run. There’s no stopping her.”
Prior to her 2022 transplant, Kara Fierro had always emphasized quality of life over quantity of life. And while her new lungs have given her the gift of more time and better health, she continues to live by that credo. Any infection can lead to rejection, so she takes every precaution to keep herself healthy while whittling down her list.
Now that skydiving has been checked off, she has set her sights on scuba diving. She dreams of doing so at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but the experience is more important than the location.
“That’s another thing my doctor said I couldn’t do for the same risk of getting a pneumothorax, but my transplant doctors say it’s OK now,” Fierro said. “So, we’re saving up money to do that. We’re not quite sure where yet, but that’s what the plan is.”
In the meantime, she hopes that her story and approach to life can help others as they contend with their own challenges.
“I love being an inspiration to people,” she said.
