Pink Nausea

I have several friends (as I am sure you all do) that are either breast cancer survivors, recently diagnosed and/or battling it right now. A few weeks ago a thing went around on Facebook telling women to post the color of their bra. It was supposedly to show support for breast cancer. I participated and it was funny to see your mild mannered friends post things like "leopard print". One friend told me it was some perv guy that started it just to hear what color bras everyone had on. One of my friends had a mastectomy and reconstruction. She posted an interesting article on her fb and the bra color exercise was mentioned in the article. My friend and I chatted about it both in email and live. She mentioned the "Pink Nausea". I had never heard that expression, but I knew exactly what she meant. Under Armor has tops and sweat suits. There is jewelry, bags, beer coozies...you name it. I think pink is now immediately associated with breast cancer. Sulie did the 3 Day walk last year. It was everywhere. I think back to when I worked in recovery at Moffitt. My co-workers would always ask me to take the women that had mastectomies. A couple of them told me they just couldn't do it and I was good at it. (oy)  I have taken care of really sick patients, but there are no words to describe being the first face a woman sees when she wakes up and answering the question, "did they have to remove my breast(s)?"

I now cover Moffitt as a sales rep. I was taking the stairs the other day and I had a flash back to being in scrubs and tennis shoes running up the stairs to get to the unit. I was transported back 15 years and I had that same feeling of "hurry up, eat fast, no time to pee, there are 20 more patients coming out of the O.R."

I don't know what made me think of this this morning. Awareness is great, but I think we need to remember the individuals.