Maimonides’ Pink Runway show returns
BY BEN BRACHFELD
Maimonides Medical Center’s
annual “Pink Runway”
fashion show to support breast
cancer research, treatment,
and awareness returned to inperson
festivities this month,
and on a new stage.
The show previously took
place at the Marquee nightclub
in Midtown Manhattan, and
last year was held virtually,
but in 2021 it will be held at the
home of the Brooklyn Cyclones,
recently renamed Maimonides
Park after the hospital bought
the naming rights.
The show took place on
Wednesday, Oct. 13 at 6:30 pm,
with a bigger and better runway
than ever built between
fi rst and third base.
“We’re going to make it safe,
and at the same time still have
a good time,” said Michael Brincat,
director of special events
and corporate partnerships at
Maimonides, and the organizer
of Pink Runway for the past
seven years.
The show features survivors
of breast cancer walking
a runway in designer gowns
and apparel, an opportunity to
feel beautiful again after traumatic
cancer treatment that
often causes them to lose their
hair and see their bodies deteriorate,
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
COURIER L 12 IFE, OCTOBER 15-21, 2021
Brincat said.
Brincat’s mother died
from breast cancer in
2003, and he does the Pink
Runway each year in her
memory.
“If you look
good, you feel
good,” Brincat
said, noting
his mother always
had her
makeup and wig on. “I make
sure these women feel the way
I would want my mother to feel
on a pink runway.”
Pink Runway’s return came
after a tough year-and-a-half at
Maimonides, which was one
of the hardest-hit hospitals in
the city at the beginning of the
coronavirus’ rampage through
New York. The hospital’s
Breast Center had to mostly
shut down in March 2020 along
with the rest of the city, when
hospitals were ordered to cancel
all elective surgeries.
Dr. Donna-Marie Manasseh,
the director of breast surgery at
Maimonides, said that despite
the importance of breast health,
and the dire consequences of
failing to act quickly, breast cancer
surgery was not considered
“emergency surgery” and had to
shut down, causing massive disruption
to the Center’s work.
The Center was closed for
routine screenings as well; it
remained open only for biopsies,
performed if a patient felt
a lump or other irregularity,
or there was other substantial
cause for alarm. Surgeries resumed
in May 2020, and the
Center gradually saw a return
to normal. But even as the facility
resumes its important
work, massive damage has resulted
from the pandemic in
the fi ght against breast cancer.
Throngs of women missed
their screenings, or had theirs’
delayed, because of the pandemic.
And even as the hospital
addresses the backlog of
screenings as the city inches
towards recovery (100 percent
of Breast Center staff are
vaccinated, Manasseh says),
by the day people continue
to come out of the woodwork
and arrive at the hospital for
work that should’ve been done
months, if not years ago.
“People are coming in and
saying they felt a mass and
still delayed their care six
or seven months because of
COVID,” said Manasseh, who
originally intended to go into
cardiac surgery but switched
paths after her mother-in-law
died of breast cancer.
The National Cancer Institute
estimates the US will
see about 10,000 additional
breast and colorectal cancer
deaths over the next decade as
a result of screenings delays
wrought by the pandemic.
“Everything has been focused
on COVID, understandably
and appropriately,” Manasseh
said. “Out of sight, out
of mind, unless of course you
have, God forbid, a symptom.
And being so preoccupied with
COVID, and once the world
opened up being so preoccupied
with what happens with that
and other things, you don’t realize
that a year-and-a-half has
gone by and you haven’t done
whatever you were supposed to
do, surveillance-wise.”
Manasseh says that she
hopes Breast Cancer Awareness
Month, ongoing until
the end of October, can break
through to people that even
amid a deadly global pandemic,
cancer is still rearing
its ugly head.
“Cancer doesn’t care that
COVID’s here, it doesn’t care
about whatever’s going on in
your life,” Manasseh said. “It’s
important to remember, we
can’t do anything unless you
show up.”
PINK POWER: Maimonides raises funds for breast cancer research
at a previous Pink Runway. Brooklyn Paper fi le photo
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