We Love… Back in the Swing!

There are many great organizations for women who are currently fighting breast cancer – and we love them all. But what about life after breast cancer? What can be done to stay on the road to wellness and who can help? What limitations still exist to be dealt with? In other words, what’s next?

Fifteen years ago, Barbara Unell set out with these questions. A breast cancer survivor, she found that though she’d been given a “clean bill of health,” she wasn’t back up and literally running. Breast cancer treatments had taken a physical and mental toll. At the time “survivorship medical care” barely existed.

Never one to let a moment get the best of her, she set out to do something about this absence. Along with her husband, she created Back in the Swing USA, a Kansas City-based national nonprofit organization. Their mission is to “support cancer survivorship education, clinical care and academic medical research.” Their work has helped to establish programs that address the needs of breast cancer survivors when they reach the step of “what’s next?”

Today they celebrate the fact that survivorship care is actively addressed in the cancer treatment community. As more and more women escape the grasp of breast cancer, Back in the Swing is able to help them as they move forward.

One of the tools of their organization is their book, Back in the Swing Cookbook: Recipes for Eating and Living Well Every Day After Breast Cancer – filled with 150 food recipes and many more life recipes for staying positive, active, and acknowledging, working with and growing past constraints.

We love the fervor with which Back in the Swing supports women on the road after breast cancer. Here’s to a great organization developed by a woman who found a need and a means of addressing it.

Image credit: Swinging high by Austin White via Flickr Copyright Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Originally published 1/17/14 on mammographykc.com.