Sockit To Lymphoedema!
The BLS need your help!
This year during Lymphoedema Awareness Week (LAW) the BLS and LSN are collaborating on ‘The Sock It Campaign’ to raise awareness forlymphoedema. We ask all our members to help make this year’s campaign a success and have worked with LSN to prepare resources for you to use.
You can downloada poster encouraging Health Care Professionals (HCPs) to have a little fun wearing odd socks during LAW and share their pictures on social media #LymphoedemaAwareness, #Sockit. The poster is A4 so it can easily be emailed to GPs and any HCPs in your area for them to print and display in their surgeries and departments. The more HCPs you can encourage to get involved the better. Think GP surgeries, hospital wards and departments, hospices, clinical commissioners and chief executives!
If you are holding an event for LAW you can download an editable version and add in details of your event.
Alongside the posters we have created two different information leaflets to email out also. One is for HCPs and one is for the public. As BLS members we ask that your primary focus be raising awareness amongst HCPs but if you want to get friends and relatives involved, local politicians or anyone famous you may know, then please go right ahead. The more awareness the better! We aim to flood social media with Sock It pictures and make the idea of wearing “odd socks” synonymous with lymphoedema, just as “Red Nose Day” is for Comic Relief, “Pudsey and Spots” are for Children in Need and Macmillan are known for their coffee mornings.
The face of our campaign this year is Nicola. She has agreed to be our poster girl and to share her story.
My name is Nicola. I havelymphoedemain my right arm after having breast cancer in 2013.
Following my surgeryI was warned by my Breast Care Nurse to look after the skin on my arm to protect it from infection.I remember washing up and feeling a knife in the sink and found I had cut my hand. Despite doing my best to clean the cut it got infected. After a trip to the GP I was told I had lymphoedema and was referred to my local lymphoedema service to be fitted for my first sleeve. I wasn’t sure how I felt about wearing a sleeve at first. I came away with an awful beige one. Wearing it made me feel uncomfortable as it looked horrible and unfeminine. At my second appointment my nurse said I needed a made to measure sleeve and she told me they came in different colours. I was pretty conservative at first and chose black and grey sleeves but then I discovered the bright colours and I have since had red, purple and blue sleeves.
I wear my sleeve with pride now after beating breast cancer. I am now embracing having lymphoedema and wearing bright happy sleeves. Please get involved in this campaign and help raise awareness so that everyone with lymphoedema can feel supported and positive like me.
A big thank you to Nicola from both the BLS and LSN. Our thanks also go to Juzo for providing Nicola’s armsleeve and photographer James Stewart