Seeing pink

On Oct. 18, 2001, La Cañada resident Suzanne Tutt was both excited and nervous. She was preparing to conduct her first meeting as president of the La Cañada Thursday Club. Then, at 10 a.m. she got a call from her doctor telling her that a mammogram exam indicated that she had breast cancer. The anxiety, she said, was terrible.

“In the following weeks I had to make hard choices for my own treatment,” Tutt said. “I needed to know more than I knew. Should I have a lumpectomy or a mastectomy? My tumor was estrogen negative, what did that mean?”

Tutt survived her fight with cancer, and during Breast Cancer Awareness Month each October she would take to the stage at the Thursday Club meetings and remind her fellow members about the importance of routine mammograms.

This year, Tutt and the club’s current president, Judy Cooper, decided to take their efforts to a new level. On Oct. 15, the Thursday Club will host a tea titled “Come Together for the Cure” for more than 200 local women. The event is being funded in part by donations from club members, as well as the Dragon Thrift shop on Foothill Boulevard.

The tea will be headlined by marketing executive Rusty Robertson and television producer Laura Ziskin, both members of the Stand Up 2 Cancer Executive Leadership Council.

On Friday, Thursday Club members were busy tying enormous pink ribbons to the oak trees that line the club’s property on Woodleigh Lane. Cooper, also a breast cancer survivor, said that finding a cure to breast cancer will require a grass roots movement that draws support from women hailing from all walks of life.

“The goal is to bring the women of the community together in one place, at one time for the same purpose — to put an end to breast cancer once and for all,” Cooper said.

According to the National Breast Cancer Awareness website, approximately 192,370 woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and an estimated 40,170 women will die from the disease. Currently, there are roughly 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States.

Everyone knows somebody who has been effected by breast cancer, Tutt said. In the last two weeks alone, she noted, she has had two friends who have been diagnosed with the disease.

October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month has gained momentum in recent years, with support coming from some unlikely sources. This year, the National Football League (NFL) threw its support behind the effort, designating all professional football games during the month of October as NFL Breast Cancer Awareness games. Players and staff are hitting the field wearing uniforms trimmed in pink.

Women need to stay in tune with their bodies, Tutt said, and if they suspect something is wrong they should request the full the gamete of appropriate tests from their doctors. Occasionally, Tutt noted, women are erroneously told by their doctors that nothing is wrong.

“We just have to stop this,” Tutt said. “My granddaughters have two grandmothers and one great, great-grandmother who had breast cancer, and I don’t want them to go through it.”