Everyone knows someone that has cancer or has gone through cancer.
Did you know there are more than 200 types of cancers? Each month Awareness is brought to various kinds of cancer.
October is Breast Cancer and Liver awareness month.
This post isn’t specifically about Breast Cancer or Liver Cancer. Instead, I want to spread awareness of one of the difficulties Breast Cancer and Liver Cancer patients face along with other cancer patients.
Tracie Byrd, mom to three, is located in Pace, Florida. Sometime during 2021, Tracie came up with the idea of a Zipper Adapted Port Shirt, aka ZAPS, for her mom and sister having treatments (not cancer-related). They both had ports for their treatments. A modified shirt like ZAPS would allow the nurses to access their Ports much more easily.
Cancer Medical Support Tool
Once the medical community heard about ZAPS shirts, Tracie saw an influx of orders. Because there is a need for them, she estimates that she may have made over 800 shirts at the time of this writing.
There are many ways to help family and friends during these times that are the worst of their life. Support doesn’t always look the same. To some, maybe a hot meal, someone to sit with them, or it could be giving them an accessory shirt that they could wear each time they have to use their Ports.
Who Could Use a ZAPS?
That’s easy! Anyone that has any port access or needs IV treatment therapy. If you’ve never been to an infusion center. Then you wouldn’t know; sometimes, it gets frigid. You wear a jacket, but once they get you hooked up, the jacket often can’t go back on.
However, a sweatshirt would be perfect. I get infusions every six weeks. Having a custom shirt with a zipper on my forearms would allow the Nurses to access my veins without me having to remove my jacket. I wouldn’t freeze the entire treatment.
A mom with a child who had cancer weighs in:
It makes the anxiety go from to the moon to about knee-high. ZAPS are game changers. For Kohlton, having his shirt off when he was little made him feel naked and insecure. Then as he grew older, he hated taking his shirts off because of girls looking at him and him being skinny (from chemo). Zaps were a huge help to us. He never got upset if they had to hook or unhook something. It was much easier to gain access. You had to unzip the shirt, and there the port was. Kohlton went from crying hysterically to only worrying when the needle was coming. Before the chemo shirt – he’d be hysterical the minute he had to take off his shirt. They are a tremendous help.
Wouldn’t it be great to help a cancer patient, such as a woman who has to take off her shirt while others look away, so she gets the privacy she deserves?
PMC writer Kara James shares, “We do everything to look away and to make it less noticeable. But even with a curtain shut, it doesn’t shut all the way, so people can still see. There’s no privacy, but having these shirts helps women feel protected.”
Call to Action
If you know someone in need or are interested in donating a ZAPS shirt to someone, please email us at [email protected].
Note: Shirt prices vary but start around $42. You can choose different styles, locations of zippers, colors, and sweatshirts, and she even embroiders some to make them feel special, which is a bonus for children going through this horrific ordeal.
