October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the focus is on creating awareness and encouraging women to get check-ups.
Jamey Thom, a Wits student doing her masters in genetic counselling, is hoping to give women who have had a mastectomy their confidence back.
“After having a mastectomy, women cannot afford to have reconstruction or it takes a long time for reconstructive surgery to take place,” said Jamey.
“This leaves women feeling self-conscious and grappling with body dysmorphia. I was inspired to try and find a way to help these women so that they could get some of their confidence back,” said Jamey.
She soon discovered the Cansa Knitted Knockers initiative.
Knitted Knockers are prosthetic breasts that can be inserted into a bra.
“I thought that being able to give them to women who lost their breast to cancer would be a wonderful way to help them feel more confident.
“While counselling these women I was struck by how much the loss of their breasts affected them,” said Jamey.
“I am not a cancer survivor myself. The way that I got involved with this initiative is because as a genetic counsellor in training, we see a lot of patients who are affected by breast cancer at our breast cancer clinics. We try to help through counselling but genetic counselling is a relatively unheard of profession.
“We see individuals who are affected by genetic conditions and help them to understand what will happen and needs to happen from a medical perspective as well as helping them adapt to the psycho-social aspects,” said Jamey.
The Knitted Knockers come in kits that include a pattern explaining how to knit or crochet the prosthetic breasts, yarn and pure merino wool.
Once the prosthetic breasts have been completed, they are returned and Cansa Knitted Knockers facilitate the donation of the prosthesis to breast cancer patients at state breast cancer clinics.
“I would like to encourage people to get involved either by making up a pair of prosthetic breasts by purchasing a kit or they can donate money and we will source people to knit the kits for us. Each kit costs R50,” said Jamey.
Eastgate Shopping Centre partnered with Cansa to bring the Knitted Knockers initiative to its customers at the Krispy Kreme Court from October 21 to 27.
