I want to show people who have cancer that there's life after cancer. Some of these people — they're more robust now! They want enjoy life!"

Tony Albano's knee was bothering him. It had swelled to twice the size of the other one. Doctors told him he had arthritis, but he was only 23.

At the doctor's office, he said, he'd look around the waiting room at the other patients, most of whom were in their 50s and 60s.

"They didn't seem to be in as much pain as I was," he said. Even the Percodan he was prescribed didn't help. "I had long hair back then. I think they just thought I wanted the medicine."

Albano kept questioning his doctors. He had a feeling there was something else going on. An X-ray resulted in a referral to M.D. Anderson Medical Center. About six months later, a doctor there diagnosed him with large cell lymphoma.

Instead of fear, he felt relief. "'Finally', I thought, 'here's something that can be fixed,'" he said.

At the time, he was living in Austin, Texas. For six months, he flew back and forth from Austin to Houston for chemotherapy.

"Southwest always had a deal," he said. "It was cheaper than driving." He took CHOP, a combination of four chemotherapy drugs: cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone. He was on CHOP for six months.

"[Those drugs] were all pretty experimental back then. I had to sign all these release forms," he said.

The doctors suggested he get involved in his healing. "The doctors told me it was half the medicine and half me," he said. "They told me I had to take care of myself, eat right, and have a good attitude."

Albano recalled lying on a cot while the chemo IV bag dripped in. "They had these curtains you could pull around (for privacy). One day, the guy in the next cot died. I couldn't see it, but I could hear everything."

After that, he said he took the long drip bag — the one that took two hours — hid it under his shirt, and went to a Red Lobster restaurant. He went to a booth, took down a picture, and used the hook to hang his IV bag.

Over "a nice meal and a beer," he'd take his chemo, he said. "I got some pretty strange looks, but they got used to me."

Albano, a skydiver, had no health insurance at the time he was diagnosed. "I had to sell my equipment to pay for chemo," he said.

When he was finished with the IV CHOP treatments, Albano said, he was bald and weighed 120 pounds. "I opted that I was cured and have been ever since."

He now owns an acre in Cedar Park, Texas, and runs a promotional printing company from his home. About two years ago, he started skydiving again. He has a United States Parachuting Association D-license and "about 600 plus jumps. Close to 700."

His land backs up to about five or six acres of "nothing," he said. "One day while I was looking out at my land I thought, 'wouldn't it be neat to skydive into this?'" He called a friend, and bought some equipment. Soon he was airborne again.

In 2001, Albano, who knows sign language and had worked as an interpreter for a deaf skydiver, helped organize the Deaf World Record (14 skydivers). The event was held over Labor Day weekend in 2001 at the near-by drop zone, Skydive San Marcos.

Then he had the idea for a "big way" for cancer survivors. Now it's becoming a reality. The cancer survivors' jump is set for July 17-19 at Skydive San Marcos.

Albano's planning to use two Twin Otters (a high-wing, twin-engine turboprop airplane) that can carry combined a total of 46 people. So far he has recruited 24 survivors from four countries, including four women.

"Thirty [people] would be nice," he said. "There's a lot of pretty formations you can do with 30. I want it to be interesting visually from the ground and from the air."

Even the jump's organizer — who's something like a choreographer — is a cancer survivor. The jumpers' cancer "runs the gamut," he said, "from nasal to gastronomical!"

In recruiting for it, he said he's "emailed every drop zone in the world," but is still working on a name for the event. "It's not a fundraiser or anything," Albano said. "It's for people who have cancer, to give them hope. I want to show people who have cancer that there's life after cancer. Some of these people — they're more robust now! They want enjoy life!"

One guy who signed up calls it the "leap of faith," said Albano.