“Feel beautiful to feel alive”

Abstract

Background: On March 8, 2016, the first Pink Day has been held at the Pink Room of the Department of Medical Oncology of our institution. The Pink Room is a literally pink ambulatory, involving internal hospital specialists and external professionals, who provides their professional skills free of charge to help women during anti-cancer treatments. The aim of the project is to help women recapture the physical image and psychological identity through complementary pathways to oncological therapies. Materials and methods: A questionnaire investigating what is the perception of the body image as well as the unmet needs of the patients was administered to all the consecutive patients admitted to the Pink Room. The first part of the questionnaire included both personal data and medical data, while in the second part there were questions exploring the body image both before and after the illness and the unmet needs. Results: The study included 86 patients with a median of 56 years of age. From the questionnaire, the following data emerged: 1. 96.2% of women who benefited the Pink Room are Italian; 2. 54.7% are married, 17% are nubile, 7.5% are divorced, 3.8% are cohabiting; 3. 39.6% have a high school diploma, 34% have a university degree and 26.4% have a lower or elementary secondary school license; 4. 47.2% declare to have a job, 32.1% are retired, 11.3% are unemployed and 9.4% are housewives; 5. 58.5% is in a post-menopausal state and 41.5% is in pre-menopausal state; 6. 62.3% have a diagnosis of breast cancer, 20.8% a gastrointestinal tumor, 5.7% an ovarian cancer and 1.9% a lung cancer; 7. 29.3% has required aesthetic advice, 20.3% breast cancer counseling, 12.2% hair styling and yoga counseling, 7.3% dermatological and nutritional advice, 6.5% psychological counseling, 2.4% endocrinological advice and 0.8% a plastic surgery consultancy; 8. 100% of women feel less physically attractive after the illness and the treatments. Conclusion: As Jane Cook, breast cancer survivor, once said “breast cancer change you and the change can be beautiful”. The pink room has the main goal of returning the patient's self-confidence, respect and love to one's own body. Aesthetic treatments, in a field like oncology, become true complementary therapies to the medical ones: “feel beautiful to feel alive” and to deal with the difficulties of the disease.