Pink for October
I almost never wear pink; the color doesn’t really suit. kthread, though, will be wearing a little pink on the top left arrow for the rest of October in support of the “Pink for October” campaign to raise awareness for breast cancer. The new pink arrow is subtle, much like cancer cells that infect one lymph node after another.
I spent two years managing databases at UNC’s Lineberger Cancer Center, working with surgeons that specialize (and are, in fact, national experts) in the sentinel lymph node procedure, which uses radioactive dye to determine the lymphatic patterns in a patient’s infected area. The dye colors infected lymph nodes, providing the surgery team with a visual lymphatic drainage map and these nodes are extracted after measured intervals in the operating room and sent to pathology. Each lymph node is about the size of a medium garlic clove and pathology can then decide if the more invasive, traditional lymph node procedure dissecting multiple levels is neccessary.
Part of my job refining database fields to reflect trends for research trials involved sitting in multidisciplinary clinic settings, including the Wednesday breast cancer clinic meetings where surgeons, nurse practicioners, nurses, radiologists, pathologists, and clinicians gather to discuss the current patients on the clinic schedule. Besides the combined brainpower examining each case at the same time in the same place, patients have the added benefit of coordinated treatment: radiation and chemo are synched with the surgery and the reconstruction team, if applicable, expects the patient’s post-op appointment.
As an interested party (my grandmother is a breast cancer survivor), I found this communal approach heartening, supportive, and laudable. Here’s to hoping the “Pink for October” blog campaign makes evident in the blogosphere the power individual web spaces linked to champion a single cause can harness.
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Posted Sunday, October 15th, 2006, 10:03 am | Filed in Design. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
