Sunday, December 06, 2009

Pink Glove Dance

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past month and a half like me, you've probably seen this. But just in case you haven't, I wanted to post this YouTube video. Providence's St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland is near and dear to me. It's where all three of my children were born. So many visits, it's hard to believe. I probably couldn't remember them all It's where Finn had all his tests after getting hit with the baseball in May. For the last couple of years, I've been having ultraounds, CT scans, you name it on my gallbladder there. And recently it's where I was a lot because of that same gallbladder.

I saw the Pink Glove Dance video on Saturday morning and immediately thought of a woman I'd met in my surgeon's waiting room this summer. She has breast cancer. The first time she was so gregarious, non-stop talking and smiling. The next time our appointments overlapped in mid-November, she acted completely different. That light up her face smile was no where to be found. She looked tired, heavy. It might just have been a bad day, but my heart was breaking. It's just an awful disease.

Most of us have had our lives touched by breast cancer. I think of my best friend's mother who is a breast cancer survivor. I also think of my children's godmother's mother who died of breast cancer. But it's not just friends' mothers, but the friends themselves fighting the fight. One of my dearest friends, who sometimes comments here, has lost and continues to lose friends to the disease.

The video features St. Vincent employees. Medline, the maker of the pink gloves, agreed to donate money if this video surpassed a certain amount of hits. That's happened if this is the video they were using to count the views, but breast cancer awareness needs to continue and hopefully this wonderful, fun video will help with that. Early treatment can really make a difference! Enjoy!