BOSOM BUDDY
Frustrated by lengthy waiting times for patients who needed mastectomies and the pressure on Groote Schuur Hospital’s breast clinic and oncology unit due to a lack of resources, surgeon Dr Liana Roodt accepted a challenge from her wine club friends to do
Surgeon Liana Roodt tells us how we can make a difference in the lives of breast cancer survivors
‘Just imagine the psychological burden on patients. You give them the diagnosis then expect them to carry that for 10 or 12 weeks before you actually start treatment.’
I ‘studied towards a B.Comm. degree for a year before I switched to medicine. Even though I was always interested in medicine, people said, “It’s such a bad idea. You won’t have a life.” But the desire to connect with people kept pulling me towards it. Once I was confident enough to trust my own voice, I did it, despite what everyone else was saying.
I think it was in my third year that I did my first surgical rotation. One of the patients had breast cancer, and I will never forget seeing her confusion and fear. It stuck with me. I always thought, “I’d like to go back to make a difference to patients like that.”
When I finally started working as a surgical medical officer, I was again presented with the challenges facing cancer patients, and thought, “I always said I wanted to do this, and here it is.” It’s about growing into your calling. I think you know what you want to do but there’s no point in rushing it, forcing it. If it’s genuine, if it’s true, you’ll mature into it. When you’re ready to deal with it, it will come.
Surgery is often the first step in the treatment of breast cancer. If it’s delayed, the entire treatment process is delayed, which, in terms of the cancer, isn’t ideal. Just imagine the psychological burden on patients. You give them the diagnosis, then expect them to carry that for 10 or 12 weeks before you actually start treatment. The impact on the patient is devastating. It also has an impact on the staff; it’s demoralising because you’re in this job to try to help people but you can’t.
I told the women in my wine club about my frustrations, and they set me a challenge: “Do something about it and we’ll help you.”
We decided to raise money to see if we could open some theatres. I wrote an email saying, “Here’s the problem. This is unacceptable. I want to do something about it. Who’s willing to help me?” They sent it to their friends, who sent it to their friends. By word of mouth, people started hearing about it and offering help, so we arranged our first wine club fundraiser. One of the emails landed in the inbox of a member of the AmaBele Belles, a group of breast cancer survivors, who pledged R10 000. We managed to scrape together the money for our first catch-up list – the backlog of patients awaiting ops.
We’ve been going for seven years now. All along, fundraising has been by word of mouth. We’ve had golf days, wine auctions… Anything you
can think of, we’ve tried. People have been so generous. Instead of birthday or wedding gifts, they ask their guests to donate to Project Flamingo. We don’t pay salaries or stipends; there’s a group of volunteers – some are breast cancer survivors, others, just touched by breast cancer. Michelle Rennie, a breast cancer survivor and former member of the Belles, is one of the directors of Project Flamingo. The other director, Marlene Strauss, is a lawyer whose mom is a breast cancer survivor. The time and energy they put into this is incredible. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to sustain it but we’re going to try for as long as possible.
I’m growing into practising what I preach: deliberately scheduling time for myself, being religious about things that are important to me – like reading and meditation – and looking at what I eat and trying to exercise. I love yoga. I have an amazingly supportive family and a wonderful partner who keeps me grounded, nurtures me and helps me put boundaries in place. When you do something like Project Flamingo, you’re not only making a choice for yourself but also for the people around you, and that’s not always fair. It’s challenging, but I’m privileged to have people in my life who allow me the time and space to do this, but who are also kind enough to tell me, “Liana, stop!”
Every Wednesday, the specialists come to the clinic to give the women their diagnosis and a treatment plan. It’s an emotionally exhausting afternoon. The patients are vulnerable and scared. They feel like they’ve been hit by a train.
I read that someone donated lipstick to the women in concentration camps during World War Two. It made me think of our breast cancer patients who often say, “I’m losing my femininity.” This inspired our pamper packs of lipstick, nail polish and hand cream, which we give to the women when they’re diagnosed. It might seem simple but it’s a profound way to show that being a woman is so much more than your breasts and your ovaries. This little pamper pack is something to remind you of that. We hand out about 100 a month at Groote Schuur Hospital, and in September we started at Tygerberg as well, so that’s about 200 packs a month. They’re so easy to contribute to; you can donate money or source the packs yourself. We have an incredible sponsorship from Bio-Oil, so a bottle is added to every pack. We offer guidelines on what the patients need, but what you put in is up to you.
It’s incredible to see the women’s faces light up. You realise that the nail polish is a distraction from the seriousness of the situation. It’s simple things. You see the patients coming to the wards with the things they received in the packs, like the lip balm for their dry lips after chemotherapy, and you realise it makes a difference. I see them after the operation and they ask: “Okay, when can I start using my Bio-Oil for the scar?” It’s a thread of care.
We can’t function without the volunteer surgeons and anaesthetists who donate their time and skills on Saturdays and public holidays. They started out doing this as a favour to me and now they are as passionate as I am. We have pathologists who check the samples, also for free. That’s a massive saving. Our big cost is paying the incredible nursing staff. We can’t work without them. We feel we need to make an effort to retain our nursing staff, so this serves as motivation for them to remain in the system. Then, obviously, we need the ward staff to look after the patients before and after the operation. They’re like angels. It’s really a team effort.
State patients are billed according to income, so some may still be billed for their admission cost. If we carried that, it would make us unsustainable, but we’ve got it down to just under R4 000 a surgery. Private patients pay about R30 000 for the same surgery.
We do between five and seven patients once a month, on a Saturday. At one point we were down to three weeks’ waiting time at Groote Schuur but we’re up to six or seven weeks again because it’s just so busy. When we started at Tygerberg Hospital, patients were at 14 weeks’ waiting time, but this has already been cut by four to five weeks. We have to give Groote Schuur Hospital and Tygerberg Hospital credit for the fact that they got on board. They realised they have a responsibility towards patients and were willing to listen to my solution.
Project Flamingo is simply an attempt to offer more timely and holistic treatment to public sector patients in the Western Cape. We’re very small, but we’re doing well in this province, so hopefully we’ll get to a point where we can offer it nationally. It’s about setting an example in the public health care sector, a sector that’s under pressure, with immense constraints on resources. Solutions are sometimes far simpler than we realise; Project Flamingo is a simple solution to a big problem.
People always say, “I don’t know how to help.” I say, you don’t have to give money; give time, an idea… A woman who’s diagnosed with breast cancer is probably a mother, a partner, an employee or employer. There are a million ways to help: cook a meal, take her kids to school, do a load of washing. It’s simple to help. We complicate it.’
FOR MORE INFO, VISIT projectflamingo.co.za