Pink Ribbon Day

Abstract

These days, Zagreb and some other Croatian cities and towns celebrate Pink Ribbon day. Every year I have participated in the traditional walk through the city, aimed at raising public awareness toward the importance of prevention and early detection of breast cancer as the crucial prerequisite for disease cure. Always the same scene: women from different patient groups and associations gather in front of the Croatian National Theatre, carrying banners with different messages; a top politician is invited to speak and, after grabbing the photo opportunity, the pink-ribbon parade sets on its way through the city. I remember the first parade I took part in, just after my first operation. I felt I had to be there – with that small ribbon on my collar I felt ready to start a revolution and change the world. But, looking at the people observing us curiously, deep inside I had an uneasy sense of being excluded, stigmatized… This time, the parade was headed by the Mayor of Zagreb, Milan Bandic, who walked with his ”pink ladies” all the way to the Ban Jelacic Square and drank coffee with us at the City Coffee House. What is the final aim of the parade? What is the visible effect of this kind of appeal? What, if anything, changes within the health care system in terms of prevention and cure for breast cancer? These are the questions I did not ask. I had survived an operation, skin sparing mastectomy, with silicone implants placement during the same intervention (the worst possible option I allowed myself to have had done due my own lack of information), and 6 cycles of chemotherapeutic protocol that stretched over 52 days because the equipment broke down twice. I believed that my Cancer Odyssey was over, that it was just an inconvenient journey any man or woman experiences in their lifetime – little did I know the real journey into the unknown had just begun.