- Vicki Tashman, a breast cancer surviver “Why should it be easier to find a date online than a compatible mentor who can help you get through chemo?”
Vicki Tashman didn’t just survive breast cancer, she beat it. Commanding all the resources and support available to her, she was a prime example of the active and pro-active patient. She interviewed different doctors, attended different support groups, signed up for different studies and never took “no” – or “I don’t know” – for an answer. All this worked to her advantage and she is alive today because of it.
The one thing she felt was missing however during her battle with the disease, was a way to find another woman who had the same type of cancer, was considering the same treatments, feeling the same side effects and processing the same fears. When she finished her treatment she decided to do something about that.
“It just occurred to me one day that here we had this unbelievable tool, the Internet, at our disposal, but there was no way for me to find someone who was going through, or had already gone through, the same kind of cancer as me,” Tashman says. “Why should it be easier to find a date online than a compatible mentor who can help you get through chemo?”
Pink-Link (www.pink-link.org) is the outgrowth of this idea and is now the only online searchable database of breast cancer patients and survivors on the Internet. Completely FREE and CONFIDENTIAL, Pink-Link allows women to enter as much detail as they like about their particular diagnosis and then search for other women who are the same age, living in the same part of the country, taking the same medications, facing the same treatment options. The site can match women who’re going through treatment simultaneously or can pair a patient with a survivor … or both.
