{"id":4803,"date":"2019-04-24T20:50:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T20:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cmshub.wpengine.com\/?p=244147"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:17:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:17:13","slug":"glossy-awareness-campaigns-werent-representing-her-cancer-so-she-started-truecancerbodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/glossy-awareness-campaigns-werent-representing-her-cancer-so-she-started-truecancerbodies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cGlossy\u201d Awareness Campaigns Weren\u2019t Representing Her Cancer, So She Started #TrueCancerBodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vicky Saynor, a 43-year-old Hertforshire resident and a mother of four, discovered a lump in her breast at a rather unexpected time. She and her new husband were in a posh airport lounge awaiting their flight to India for their honeymoon, and the lounge bathroom had large mirrors. She had uncharacteristically chosen to wear a dress that showed some cleavage, and she says she saw the lump in the mirrors and immediately knew something was amiss. She gave herself a breast exam right there in the bathroom and felt the lump bulging beneath her skin.<\/span>\u201cOur honeymoon was frankly not as it should have been. I wanted to be home and at the doctors and getting this damn thing checked out,\u201d remembers Vicky<\/a>. \u201cI tried desperately to put it to the back of my mind\u2014but only on the last day did I truly relax, and that\u2019s because I knew I\u2019d be at the doctor\u2019s in less than 48 hours\u2019 time with some reasonable medical opinions.\u201d<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Facebook\/Vicky Saynor<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span>Vicky was subsequently diagnosed with grade III stage I breast cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy and a lymph biopsy, followed by chemotherapy. Luckily, the tumor was caught early and was very treatable. If it weren\u2019t for the fact that she ran across a new acquaintance who had written about a friend dying of breast cancer, however, she says she would never have started checking her breasts at all and wouldn\u2019t have discovered the lump so soon.<\/span>That\u2019s why Vicky believes cancer awareness campaigns<\/a> are so important. Except that most of them don\u2019t seem to be doing their job. None of the frilly and \u201cglossy\u201d pink awareness campaigns had ever been enough to convince Vicky to check her breasts, and none of them represented anything close to what she looked or felt like while she was going through treatment.<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Facebook\/Gammy Tit<\/a><\/span>And so #TrueCancerBodies<\/a> was born. Vicky started the collective and got a great group of women and men together for an April 14 photo shoot to show the world exactly what cancer looks like.<\/span>
\n<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Instagram\/True Cancer Bodies<\/a> and Facebook\/True Cancer Bodies<\/a><\/span>\u201cI wanted some good to come out of all this fury and disappointment that was being shared on both social and traditional media,\u201d she says<\/a>. \u201cSo I started to reach out to some inspiring cancer friends that I knew and we stumbled somewhat into an agreement that for far too long, cancer has been portrayed as fun, happy, fluffy and often pink. It also annoyed us that even though there are over 200 different cancers, that breast cancer especially dominated the narrative of major supporting retailers and corporations.\u201d<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Instagram\/True Cancer Bodies<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span>The people in the True Cancer Bodies campaign, who range from 26 to 57 years old, have all types of different cancers, such as breast, lung, liver, and colon cancer. They have scars on different parts of their body, bald heads, colostomy bags, and other unpleasant physical changes that cancer and cancer treatment have left them with. It may not be pretty, but it\u2019s raw and real, and absolutely breathtaking.<\/span>Vicky now affectionately refers to her three-centimeter tumor as \u201cJerry<\/a>\u201d and isn\u2019t shy about talking about him. She hopes that sharing her experience can help encourage other people to do self-checks and screening when appropriate in a way that standard campaigns can\u2019t.<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: Facebook\/True Cancer Bodies<\/a><\/span>\u201cThe prognosis of so many cancer cases could be better if the population\u2019s awareness was improved,\u201d says Vicky. \u201cWe strongly feel that the best way to do this is by showing what cancer really looks like \u2013 the bald heads, the scars, the mastectomies. A picture of a 35-year-old woman with a stoma bag is the real face of cancer and is exactly what is needed to be shared to increase awareness of early detection techniques.\u201d<\/span>Thank you, Vicky, for filling a gap in society\u2019s understanding of cancer when you saw it. With any luck, your campaign will save countless lives for years to come!<\/span>
\n<\/span>Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vicky Saynor, a 43-year-old Hertforshire resident and a mother of four, discovered a lump in her breast at a rather unexpected time. She and her new husband were in a posh airport lounge awaiting their flight to India for their honeymoon, and the lounge bathroom had large mirrors. She had uncharacteristically chosen to wear a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44526,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions\/44526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}