Bank of Tissues: project encourages the self-esteem of women with cancer

Receiving a cancer diagnosis is not an easy time. After all, this is an aggressive disease, the treatment of which requires drastic measures, such as surgery or the use of drugs with many side effects.

For women, drug treatment, known as chemotherapy, can be especially difficult, as hair loss is common and balding is often a complicated condition for those undergoing treatment.

Despite being something delicate, it is necessary to remember that hair is not synonymous with beauty and that, in fact, the important thing is to get rid of all these impositions that surround us. No woman’s self-esteem has to meet standards!

However, for women who are uncomfortable with hair loss, there are very nice initiatives that aim to restore these patients’ self-esteem, such as the Banco de Lenços Flávia Flores, which distributes tissues to women undergoing treatment.

Discover the Handkerchief Bank project

Banco de Lenços is a project created by Flávia Flores within another project of hers, Chemotherapy for Beauty. Flávia is a blogger and writer who faced breast cancer in 2012 and has used her own experience to help other women with the disease. The objective of the Handkerchief Bank is to help patients who have lost their hair feel safer by distributing handkerchiefs to these women.

The project works as follows: cancer patients sign up for the Handkerchief Bank and have the opportunity to describe their style. A few days later, they receive at home, completely free of charge, a handkerchief that best suits their preferences, packed in a neat pink box.

All scarves distributed by the project are donated by people or companies, and they can be new or used. After arriving at the Handkerchief Bank, the pieces are sorted according to the patients’ request and sent to their homes.

Expenses with sorting, packaging and shipping are covered with donations from 30 reais – enough to deliver a tissue to a patient. You can subscribe and donate the same amount monthly, from anywhere in the country.

The story behind the Tissue Bank

In 2012, Flávia Flores, then 35 years old, realized that she had a small lump in her breast. The doctor told her not to worry, as she had her preventive exams up to date, but it would be necessary to change her silicone prosthesis, which was broken.

During the surgery, the doctor took the opportunity to remove the nodule and send it for a biopsy, which found, to everyone’s astonishment, that Flávia had advanced breast cancer.

Flávia had to have another surgery, this time to have a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. Then she started the 15 months of treatment, with 30 chemotherapy sessions and 28 radiotherapy.

Unfortunately, the side effects did not take long to appear and, along with the hair, Flávia’s friends and boyfriend also left, who did not know how to deal with the situation. So, to not feel so alone, Flávia started sharing her experiences on social networks.

“My mother didn’t like to see me without makeup, because she was scared of the ‘sick face’. I decided to show that the disease could not steal that from me either, so I decided to tell others how I felt and how I was overcoming that pain”, Flávia told Correio 24 Horas.

In a short time, her page Chemotherapy and Beauty became a success, and Flávia gave beauty tips to other women who also underwent this treatment, including teaching them how to make different ties with the scarf.

Through this network, Flávia began to earn and exchange handkerchiefs with friends who were experiencing the same problem. When the exchange started to get too big, a partnership was formed with a hospital to manage tissue donations and patient orders.

“When receiving a handkerchief, the patient does not feel alone, because she knows that, like her, there are other women who are undergoing the same treatment”, explains Flávia Flores. This is because, when receiving the handkerchief, the patient is not only receiving an object, but an exchange of positive energy, which will manifest itself through beauty.

Founded in 2014, Banco de Lenços has donated more than 10,000 handkerchiefs, distributed in all states of the country. On her Facebook fanpage, Flávia talks to more than 100,000 followers, who take advantage of the space to share their own experiences with cancer, treatment and new life after recovery. An incredibly inspiring project.