During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Division of Breast Imaging invited the UT Southwestern community to submit decorated bras as part of its ninth annual Bra Decorating Contest. The goal of this annual campaign is to generate awareness, early detection, and screening of breast cancer. To view the final vote totals and a gallery of all the beautiful bras, check out the photo album on UT Southwestern’s Facebook page.

 

First place (tie): “Hakuna Ma Tatas”

 

The creators: Jennifer Polasek, Jeannet Nelson, Justina Esaac, and Maggie Gray of the Radiation Oncology team.
The spokesperson: Justina Esaac, Radiation Therapist

What was your inspiration?

The Lion King is a movie based on a young cub’s journey in understanding what it means to be brave. This bra is a representation of all our patients fighting breast cancer. Patients continuously show us the true meaning of bravery while upholding a “no worries” attitude.

This bra is also in honor of one of our own co-workers who is currently fighting breast cancer, yet she shows up to work every day with a positive attitude. We want to honor all those fighting breast cancer – past, present, and future – with this bra to raise awareness and to acknowledge how fierce our patients teach us to be every day.

 

First place (tie): “Just a Squeeze”

 

The creators: Kady Le, Maggie Gray, and Sydney Schornack of the Radiation Oncology team
The spokesperson: Maggie Gray, Radiation Therapist

What was your inspiration?

The three of us made the bra together, but Sydney came up with the concept. The inspiration behind our idea was that early detection really does save lives – and that a yearly mammogram could prevent patients from finding out that they have extensive breast cancer when it’s too late to operate or it has spread to other parts of the body.

For example, my own mom found her breast cancer on an annual breast exam, and while all cancer diagnoses are difficult, her cancer was a stage 0; they caught it that early! It was much easier to treat, and she’s been cancer-free for 13 years! We hoped that we could convince women that a slightly uncomfortable yearly “squeeze” was better than the alternative, and this can apply to almost all cancers and annual screenings.

 

Second place: “Treasure Your Chest”

 

The creator: Faye Henson of the Health Information Management team

What was your inspiration?

I let my management choose from about 20 different theme ideas. Once we had our top five, I sent them out to the whole department to choose the final theme. We had a lot of fun engaging with this and I enjoyed representing my department with the bra that my mother, Beth Gibson, and I worked on.

The 'Treasure Your Chest' theme was actually one of my favorites out of the 20 initial options that I sent. I already had the vision of how I wanted to create the bra, and had a person in mind who it represented. I had a co-worker, years ago, who ignored signs and symptoms that she was having, and when she finally did get everything checked out, the cancer had spread to her lungs. She fought, but unfortunately, it was not long before she lost the fight with breast cancer. I cannot begin to imagine how frightened she must have been, to have symptoms, to know something was wrong, but to be so overcome by fear that she avoided getting it checked out.

We all have to remember that despite our fears, detecting breast cancer early is far better than not having time to fight. Treasure your family, treasure your life, and treasure your chest!