| | |  Health & Beauty | May 2009 
Cancer de Mama: Improving Life for Survivors
 Cara Brady - Vernon Morning Star
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| | Gail Hawke of Nightingale Medical Supplies with one of the Mexican women who received a prosthesis and bras from the North Okanagan team who visited earlier this year. | |
The need was great but the women from Canada knew they could help the Mexican women.
In Mexico, women can get the breast cancer surgery they need but if they can’t afford a prosthesis, they have to go without.
“We saw women who still had their bandages on and women who had had surgery 27 years ago and never had a prosthesis. Some of them came in heavy clothes even though it was hot, to try to disguise their bodies,” said Gail Hawke of Nightingale Medical supplies, who was one of a group of North Okanagan women who visited La Penita, north of Puerto Vallarta, to help fit bras and prostheses for the Cancer de Mama (breast cancer) group.
The program was started by Jackie Jackson, a breast cancer survivor who lives in Mexico part of the year, in 1996 when she found that many Mexican women couldn’t get help after breast cancer surgery. The program provides gently-used bras and prostheses collected from the community, including some bras from Bras for a Cause, and some new items donated by manufacturers. Some of the volunteer team members showed local women how to sew pockets in regular bras to adapt them.
The team fitted more than 300 women, ages 27 to in their 80s, in three days with interpreters giving the women instruction on the care of the bras and prostheses.
“The women were so appreciative. You were giving them a gift that will change their lives. We met one woman who lived in a remote village who had been shunned by everyone in her village since she had the surgery,” said Esther Dawson, a team member.
Hawke said that even without communication in a common language, it was easy to see that the women knew they looked better and felt better about themselves.
“Some of the women burst into tears. They had so little but they gave us gifts,” she said, showing a doll and embroidered handbag which she is keeping in the store to receive donations for the project. She is also accepting donations of bras to be sent to Mexico.
Some Mexican women have been trained to do the fitting and have taken over the project so it will not be necessary for the volunteers to go every year now. |
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