Feel Your Boobies, save a life
By EILEEN GLANTON LOFTUS
asap (AP)
Leigh Hurst wants you to feel your boobies.
She felt hers, and it saved her life.
At age 33, the founder of the charity Feel Your Boobies was an unlikely victim of breast cancer. She was fit, with no genetic markers for the disease. But one day in 2002, she felt a hard ridge near the outer edge of a breast. Over the next year and a half, she pushed that hard ridge to the back of her mind, bringing it up only casually with two different physicians. They thought it was probably nothing to worry about.
But Hurst kept feeling, and the ridge didn't move. In 2004, she decided to seek one more opinion. A nurse practitioner ordered a mammogram, and she was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer, an early phase of the disease.
A lumpectomy removed the cancerous tissue, and radiation and chemotherapy followed. Today, at 36, Hurst is cancer-free and spreading a call to other young women to examine their breasts regularly.
Her message is designed to turn heads. She started with a casual nudge to her running partners. ''Hey, you guys, you've gotta feel your boobies.''
Her friends giggled, but got the point.
HITTING A STRIDE
In October 2004, Hurst and some friends participated in the two-day Avon Walk for Breast Cancer to celebrate the end of Hurst's treatment. She made T-shirts for the group with the catchphrase ''feel your boobies.'' She stuffed extras in her backpack, and put a sign on the pack encouraging fellow walkers to ask her for information.
''People snapped them up,'' Hurst recalls. The day after the walk, high on adrenaline and the success of her new slogan, she and her friends visited the outdoor set of the ''Today'' show. They got a little airtime, and word started to spread. Hurst began selling her T-shirts and other paraphernalia at more charity events, and hit the speaking circuit.
She incorporated her business and began channeling some of the proceeds from her merchandise sales back to charitable organizations. To date, Feel Your Boobies has given more than $20,000 to groups including the American Cancer Society and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
Hurst's brash slogan targets younger women, who may not be worried enough to check themselves regularly. According to the Komen Foundation, only 6 percent of the women diagnosed with breast cancer each year are under age 40. But for that 6 percent, self-examination is the primary means of discovering the disease. (Doctors generally don't recommend annual mammograms until women reach age 40.)
Hurst reasoned that they may need an attention-grabbing catchphrase, coupled with stylish T-shirts, baseball caps, even a bandanna that Hurst recommends for patients going through chemotherapy.
''When I wore a bandanna, while I was losing my hair, I felt like people were always looking at me and wondering,'' she said. ''I put the 'Feel Your Boobies' slogan right on there to get the information out.''
OFFENSIVE FOR A CAUSE
If the merchandise turns heads, even offends, Hurst doesn't mind.
''My whole goal is to raise awareness,'' she said. ''I am willing to be the beating board if someone takes offense to my message.''
Today, Hurst is feeling well. She takes tamoxifen to reduce the risk of cancer recurring. She will have routine mammograms, and continues to examine her breasts, which have added scar tissue since her lump was removed.
She is also embracing a different way of life than the one she enjoyed in her 20s. A former business consultant, she had lived in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, but moved to her small hometown of Middletown, Pa., shortly before her diagnosis. She has found small-town life, and increased time with her family, invaluable through her illness and the founding of her business.
Life today, she says, is simpler.
''My diagnosis really aligned things for me. I no longer needed to do the soul-searching I had done a lot of before,'' she says. ''I knew where my priorities needed to be.''
