EHH_Dana Donofree: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

EHH_Dana Donofree: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Everyone Hates Healthcare Intro:
For many people today, healthcare feels like we’re behind enemy lines. The system is geared to take care of us, but why do we feel like we’re in it alone? Everyday stories are a powerful way to shine light on the gaps that make it feel this way. I’d like to welcome you to Everyone Hates Healthcare, where we bring you real people’s healthcare stories unfiltered. And now your host, Michael Swartz.

Michael Swartz:
Hey, everyone. Michael Schwartz here and I want to welcome you again to the podcast. Today, I want to bring you an inspiring guest, diagnosed with breast cancer at 27, Dana Donofree founded AnaOno out of her own necessity and desire for pretty, sexy, beautiful lingerie. After a mastectomy, bras no longer fit her surgically altered body, and Dana was certain that there must be more than just sports bras and … With a degree in fashion design for Savannah College of Art and Design and quite successful fashion industry career, she took her ten-plus years experience and put it toward designing, launching and growing AnaOno. Dana is very active in the breast cancer community and is involved with several non-profits, including Living Beyond Breast Cancer and METAvivor. However, she is most proud of being able to make a difference in the lives of women worldwide and is honored to continue to spread her mission of beauty, confidence, and empowerment. Dana, I want to welcome you to the podcast, so excited to be talking to you!

Dana Donofree:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here.

Michael Swartz:
So why don’t you start off and tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to start AnaOno?

Dana Donofree:
Well, a little bit about myself. I grew up in a tiny little farm town in the middle of Ohio, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there and go experience the world. So I shipped myself off to Savannah College of Art Design, and from there I took the train back up north to New York City and really started my fashion career in the place where, to me, was the epitome of being a fashion designer and life was going smoothly. I was working really, really hard, I was climbing the ladder, I was really getting great opportunities, and my fiance and I had moved out to Colorado to try something different in life because it was on the dawn of 2008, where we all experienced the big crash and the fashion industry started to change. And I kind of figured, I take this opportunity to get a master’s or do something additional because I was always told that I would never be an executive in the fashion space without a master’s degree because I was only, quote-unquote, just a designer. And from there, that’s not what happened, because a day before my 28th birthday, I got diagnosed with early-stage HER2 positive breast cancer, and it came to a complete shock to myself and to my fiancee and to my friends and family. And we had to postpone our wedding that was planned just three months down the road. And from there it just everything changed, life changed, my outlook on life changed, things I wanted in life changed, and I didn’t really know what else to do but to take the skills and talent that I had naturally, and apply that to a world where I could hopefully make a difference and other, what I expected to be young women’s lives because I was so young and so isolated and just extracted from what we thought was actually somebody that was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. And I started designing bras that fit my new body, and one thing led to another, and AnaOno was born and spent about ten years in the making now. So I feel honored to be where we are today and to have shipped bras around the world and to continue to support the breast cancer community through advocacy efforts and of course, through my business.

Michael Swartz:
It’s incredible. So 27, I mean, that is just incredibly young.

Dana Donofree:
It’s really young. Actually, about 40,000-ish individuals will be diagnosed under the age of 40 annually. Just to put that into perspective, there’s somewhere around, loosely speaking, depending on how you want to segment out the breast cancer community about a little over 300,000 people a year that are diagnosed with breast cancer. So it’s, it’s about 10% of the annual diagnosis is happen to those that are under 40. And just a lot of people don’t know that.

Michael Swartz:
That’s so many. And when you’re young, you don’t really think about it. What was the first thing that went through your mind when you got the diagnosis?

Dana Donofree:
I thought I was going to die. It was the very initial reaction. I thought that there was a reason why we didn’t talk about young women having breast cancer. Knowing what I know now, I’m, I’m kind of grateful I didn’t know it when I was 27. But a lot of young patients have very aggressive forms of breast cancer and metastasize very quickly, which means a terminal breast cancer illness and which typically leads to death within about 36 months. So it was, it was a shock to, A, feel like why was I the one that got breast cancer? Like I wasn’t a grandma, you know, like I didn’t earn, like I didn’t have a life long enough to, like, develop cancer, and I didn’t think I was doing a whole lot of things wrong, I was in the best shape of my life, we were planning a wedding, it was, you know, I was getting promoted at work. I had my own car, we were making a condo house payment. You know, you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do in your mid-to-late twenties. Cancer is not typically one of them. And I was diagnosed with a cancer called HER2 Positive and in 2010, it was very interesting, my doctors told me to stay off the internet because the information on the internet was horribly outdated because there has been a groundbreaking drug that was able to hit the market that really has been changing the course of this fragmentation of breast cancer. And had I Googled it, that’s not what the data showed, right?

Michael Swartz:
Yeah.

Dana Donofree:
It was talking about the aggressive nature, how quickly it would metastasize and how deadly it was. So we really kind of flipped the script with this treatment course, but people weren’t, it was happening so fast, there wasn’t enough information out there to actually really digest that and explain that to a user.

Michael Swartz:
Yeah. So what did you do if you couldn’t go to Google? I know that I am, whenever something comes to mind, I’m searching on Google. So what, what steps did you take after your doctor told you that?

Dana Donofree:
You really, you know, sometimes 2010 doesn’t feel so long ago, right? But it’s, it’s really a full decade and I feel like in tech years,

Michael Swartz:
Yeah.

Dana Donofree:
Could be forever ago. But you know, in some ways we weren’t using Google like how we’re using it today. I think that there was a lot of just old and stale information out there at that point in time. So you really, really relied on what your medical professionals were telling you. And I did live in a, in a sense of bliss for a little while. My brother is a chemical engineer for the Navy, and he did not, so he actually did Google it. And I remember the phone call that I got from my mom after she told me that my brother had looked up my type of cancer. And, you know, it was, it was just really disturbing. And I was really facing it alone because I was 27 years old and I was getting introduced to other people, but they were north of 50. I think the youngest woman I met was 49, about to turn 50. And they’re just at very different stages in their life. You know, their kids were grown or in college or having babies and they were becoming grandmothers. And I’m sitting here going, I don’t even know if I can have kids, I don’t even know if I’m going to be alive for my, my marriage or my wedding. And it was really just that point of association was really challenging because there wasn’t a virtual world like Instagram. I think Facebook was actually literally your friends. So it was, I laugh, I’m like, I’m pretty sure I just migrated off of MySpace not too far before my diagnosis, so.

Michael Swartz:
Good old MySpace.

Dana Donofree:
Good old MySpace.

Michael Swartz:
So did you find a support group? What was, I just can’t imagine being 27 and not, like, yeah, it must have felt alone. Where did you look for support?

Dana Donofree:
I was diagnosed in Denver, Colorado, so it was already a smaller community at the time and they had a young adult cancer support group and I never went because at 27 years old I thought to myself, I can’t sit next to the person that has brain cancer when I only have breast cancer, and that was a real feeling of mine. I felt like I was living in this world where breast cancer was being marketed on billboards and on stories, and everybody was jumping up and down and looked so happy and were smiling with their pink boas and their feather tutus and, you know, all of these things. And I’m just, I felt guilty that I was so angry, that I was so mad that I got diagnosed with breast cancer. And I didn’t understand why, because young women weren’t present in that conversation. I mean, so much so that every doctor’s appointment I went to, it was without fail that the nurse, the receptionist, the doctor, the person cleaning the room, it really didn’t matter who it was, when they found out that I was there for breast cancer, like, the immediate reaction was like, you’re so young, you’re too young for this, this shouldn’t have happened to you. And I’m kind of like, yeah, you think? I don’t think I’m supposed to be here either, but I am. So like, shouldn’t we be talking about that part? And it was just it was kind of one of those things one after another. And that’s really why I advocate so hard even ten years now, well, 11 years after my diagnosis is because we’re still not there yet. There’s still a lot of lack of access and information and education and support. It’s why I volunteer with a lot of organizations and nonprofits and really try to turn up the volume not just for, for young people, but for all fragmented audiences within and patients within the breast cancer community.

Michael Swartz:
That’s incredible that you’re helping support people out there. What would you say for young people that’s listening to this? That’s like, what should they do? How should they go about? Because I’m sure that they were, they’re of the mindset like you were, I’m too young.

Dana Donofree:
Well, I will start off by saying that your health is your own due diligence. And I found my lump on my own and I was in the shower and I happened to have a pimple in my armpit. And I just went to kind of go check in on the pimple and see if it was still there. And my wrist rubbed up against the very, very top part of my breast tissue. And I just felt the tiniest sort of little nodule, like a little bump. It almost felt like a pea inside my, like underneath my, my armpit and into my breast. And it just dawned on me like, you know, I don’t think that was there before or if it was there one, what if I haven’t noticed it, like, why is this such a like a stark, like, oh my God, there’s something there. And I scheduled my doctor’s appointment to go in and check with my doctor, who at that time was a very old, old gynecologist gentleman, which I’m sure was days away from retirement. And I ended up having a last-minute business meeting that popped up and I canceled the appointment with my doctor. And at this point in 2010, nurse practitioners were really starting to come into play. They weren’t sort of, of the norm yet. And so when I called the receptionist back to reschedule, she goes, well, you can’t see the doctor because he’s booked out too far, but you can see our nurse practitioner. And so when I saw her, I say to this day that she saved my life because she was also young, she was probably in her mid-thirties, late-thirties. And when she did my breast exam, she said, you know, you’re so young, the odds are in your favor, but if it was me, I would just want to know. I would want to know what is this? And I, and I really think that you should go on for the next screening and the next testing. And I said, yeah, absolutely, I want to know. And the fortunate part of this story is that was my story. The unfortunate part of this story is that my story is not the norm, my story is rare. So a lot of young women sit in that doctor’s office and they tell their doctors or their physicians that they have found a lump or they have seen a change in their breast or that they have discharge in their nipple, or that their breast is always hot and because of their age, that they will stop at that point and say, let’s just monitor it, let’s just look at it. And the reality is, is that for a lot of young women, there isn’t that time. I mean, my tumor doubled in size every single screening and test that I went under. If my doctor had just told me to wait three months or to wait six months, my cancer would have undoubtedly spread through other parts of my body, and it could have been a much, much later stage than an early stage diagnosis. And so I just urge the young listeners that if you know something is not right with your body, no matter what it is that you fight inside that doctor’s office to get yourself to the screening or to the scan or to the blood test or to whatever it is that will give you a definitive result that there is nothing wrong, because it doesn’t cost anybody anything except for the patient who has to pay the co-pays and go do the work. So there’s just a reality like you’ve got it, you’ve got to advocate for yourself, and when you know something’s not right, it probably isn’t, and just really push forward. It’s a shame that that’s on the patient’s responsibility.

Michael Swartz:
Yeah. Better safe than sorry.

Dana Donofree:
Better safe than sorry, always.

Michael Swartz:
Now, when you were finally going for treatment, what was that like? I mean, because, again, you’re, you’re young, you’re going through this. When you were looking at the other side, knowing that, okay, we caught it, we’re moving forward, what was the process of kind of changing that outlook? Now you know that you’re going to make it, you, good, you’re getting treatment, but what was that experience like?

Dana Donofree:
Well, there’s so many decisions that you have to make so quickly. And I kind of call it the patient conveyor belt. You just get on it and you go, you’re bouncing around from doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment, really navigating your own care. And a lot of ways when I got the call, I was home in Ohio celebrating my bridal shower for my up and coming wedding and my birthday, when I got the call and my gynecologist told me that I had cancer, I really didn’t hear another word after that. My, my mother had to call back and like, pull out her little notepad and start taking notes for me because I didn’t hear a single word after those three dreadful words. And she said, well, what’s next? And she goes, well, you need to find a surgeon. And I’m sitting there going, a surgeon? Like, how do we just go and find a surgeon? Like, I’ve had my wisdom teeth removed, I’ve never broken a bone. I, you know, I never had anything like crazy or complicated happen in my life. And I’m like, you don’t just, like, open up the phone book and pick a surgeon and call a surgeon. Like, where do you start, you know? And I was just, that was the part that was so shocking to me. She’s like, well, let me see if I can get you a few referrals. And I’m just like, I don’t even, it’s almost like this overwhelming ability to say, like what? I have cancer and now I’m supposed to figure it out? Like, I’m supposed to navigate this system. And you start, you start building your team because you’re, you’re interviewing your doctor, it’s just like you would interview for anything else. Like these people are going to be a part of your life for the rest of your life in a lot of ways. And I’m so lucky that I had an incredible boss, the company I worked for in Colorado, and she connected me to a very, very dear friend of hers that had faced breast cancer. And she was pretty much like, here’s your team, here’s the doctors that you need, here’s who you start calling. Like, tell me if you have any problems, I will text each and every one of them, you know, snd I was so, again, a unique story, not a common story. And so you have to start making decisions about your life very, very quickly. I mean, we were due to get married. I had to make literally a decision in almost 48 to 72 hours if I, if I wanted to have children or not due to ovarian preservation and egg retrieval and all of these additional things. I had to decide what surgery was best for me, if I was going to be able to have a lumpectomy or if I was going to need a mastectomy, which is the full removal of the breast. And then, and in some ways the oncology, which is the chemo part, is somewhat spelled out for you in certain ways. Your cancer dictates a lot of that treatment, so depending on certain tumor markers, certain genetic tests, certain tumor readings, really will tell you how aggressive your cancer is and what sort of markers it has, what does it react to, and that becomes a bit of a science. But all in all, I mean, so overwhelming, like and I’m not just saying because of an age, I think it’s overwhelming at any age, but for somebody who had never, ever needed to go to the doctor other than an annual appointment, I mean, it’s really shocking to the system.

Michael Swartz:
Oh, so many, so many choices. And being 27, I mean, not going to the doctor, so what would you, what kind of insight would you give to anybody that has to make those decisions? Again, you, you had somebody there, but for people that don’t have anybody there, what, how would you go about it?

Dana Donofree:
In certain ways, my advice when I get introduced to newly diagnosed people, because unfortunately, that, and sadly that happens almost every day but, you know, I really just recommend taking it one day at a time because like what I just shared in like a one minute nugget is very, very overwhelming in real time. And you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’ve got to kind of learn it along the way as well. But it’s just a matter of like reaching out and trying not to go into like an inner dark corner all by yourself because there is help out there. I reside on the board of Living Beyond Breast cancer, we have incredible, incredible online resources and information. We even have hotlines and ways to connect to other people that are diagnosed with the same, you know, very similar or the same kind of cancers, which is really, really impactful. There’s an organization for young individuals called the Breast Tees, where you can really lean in and get a community of support and get matched with somebody else that is facing exactly what you’re facing. And I think there’s more help out there today than what there was but you have to look for it, and you have to not be scared of it. I mean, I was definitely scared of getting help because I thought I should be strong, I thought I should be able to do all of this on my own. And that was not the right decision. I should have asked for help very early on, and I didn’t it. And when people offered help, I didn’t take it because I felt like that showed some level of weakness or some inability of me to fight cancer on my own, and it’s really not what it’s about. Like it’s a fight for your life, but it’s not a fight against those that love you or those that care for you or those that want to help. Everybody is having cancer alongside with you, and a lot of people, especially when you’re young, haven’t faced it before. So it’s not like when you’re 65 years old and maybe your best friend had cancer. Maybe your husband or your partner had a heart attack or, you know, like there’s something where you’ve had a life experience navigating a medical system and navigating all of these ins and outs. But in reality, when you’re a young person, you probably haven’t encountered that, in most cases so, you’re kind of really swimming in the sea all by yourself. And if there’s somebody that can just like throw you the lifeboat, like take the lifeboat, you know, and that’s definitely where I went wrong in my own treatment and care.

Michael Swartz:
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s tough. I mean, the healthcare system is tough enough to navigate just to find a doctor. So I think some of the organizations that are out there are incredible resources.

Dana Donofree:
For sure.

Michael Swartz:
So let’s talk about this idea of keep on fighting. So you’re going through treatment, what’s the idea for AnaOno? Like when did you decide to really take your fashion background and bring it to people?

Dana Donofree:
Well, I learned a very important lesson very early on is that once cancer happens to you, it’s never over. And a lot of what we go through, the surgeries, the treatments that continue to oncology are medications, like it’s a constant in your life. And I think again, because I was naive and you only know what you know, I kept thinking to myself, oh, after the next surgery, I’m going to be better, after the next surgery you know, so first you get your breasts removed, and then a lot of times, if you can’t go direct to implant, if that’s what your choice is, they’ll use what they call an expander, which helps expand, re-expand your skin and your muscles and things like that, so they can later do the reconstructive surgery to replace the breasts that were removed. And these these are all multiphase surgeries, they don’t just happen in one operating room in most cases. So there was this extenuating like timeline where I was like, okay, well now I have my expanders in and now I’m going to go through chemotherapy. And then after chemotherapy, I’m going to have the expanders out and I’m going to put the implants in. You know, I mean, listen, I had friends that had boob jobs, I got it. But breast cancer is not a boob job, and it’s completely different. And so I was using that as my point of reference and not thinking that I was going to be so insanely different, but mastectomy and reconstructive surgeries have come so far in the last decade, it’s really, really mindblowing how far we have come from a surgical perspective. But back in 2010, it was very rare that you would be able to do what they call a nipple sparing mastectomy where they can actually keep the nipples intact to the body because they didn’t have the technology, they didn’t know how to keep it alive. So this is like super gross, but a very real thing, when I was offered to keep my nipples, the plastic surgeon literally told me they had like a, I don’t know, a very low percentage success rate. So just to expect for it to die and fall off, that was the point. And I was like, well, that sounds pretty gross, I’d rather spare myself that traumatic experience. So like, just take the nipples, it’s not a big deal. But, you know, you go through these things, you’re making decisions in the moment. You don’t really know what they mean. And like, later on you surface and you say, well, what is this? You know, like you’ve been stripped of all things that you have for your identity and a lot of things that help you feel like, you know, help you express your femininity and one being your body, right? So I chopped off my boobs, I have no nipples, I have, like, striking scars across my chest, I have no hair, I have no eyebrows, I have no eyelashes, you just kind of like looking back in the mirror, like, just kind of feeling like this broken Barbie doll, like the one that you mutilated and tore apart and chopped the hair off and burned and did all of these things to, because, like, I don’t know, for some reason, little girls like to ruin their Barbie dolls up after loving them so much. And it was just this feeling that I was like, wow, this is just so crazy. Like the emotion that I had connected to not just my breasts but to my identity as a whole, and of course, now I’m fast forward a year and I’m sitting there and I’m about ready to go on our re-planned wedding and honeymoon. And I had to pull out like all of those beautiful intimates that I got at my bridal shower the year before, before I got diagnosed with breast cancer. And I’m just trying them on and nothing’s fitting me and I’m throwing in at a pile to give to goodwill like tags on everything, you know, because I saved it cause I’m like, big deal. Like, my my boobs are going to be different, but like, how different are they going to be? And all I could really wear was a sports bra. So not only can I not look at myself in the mirror, I can’t expose myself to the person that I love that I want to get married to and spend the rest of my life with, I can’t get dressed for work because all I can wear is a sports bra. And I was I was still a professional. So when you’re young, I mean, I didn’t, I don’t think you have a lot of money sitting in the bank. So, like, I think I took three weeks off for my mastectomy and I was back at work like full-time for the whole, through chemo, through everything. So I’m, I’m trying to go into the boardroom. I’m trying to sell, sell baby socks and shoes. And I’m like, hiding the neon green sports bra. So, like, the buyers on the other side don’t think I’m just like some lazy individual that couldn’t take off my sports bra after the gym or something crazy. And it was just like, I realized that this one piece that I put on my body every day was like dictating my entire life. And I joke, but it’s in all seriousness, I have a crazy hot flash in the middle of the night because that’s what happens when you’re on chemo and all of these, like hormone suppressing drugs, and I wake up in the middle of the night, I just was like, I am letting the fact that, like these sports bras run my life and they have completely, this whole process has taken over me, it’s taken control, I have no control left. And it felt like it was just I had the talent and the skill to design something that was going to work for my body, I had the lived experience as a young person with breast cancer, having her breasts amputated to save her life, and I was kind of crazy enough and always wanted to have my own business. So like, hey, why not try it? And it was really just one of those revelations where in that moment it just. I didn’t know what it was like. I was always blaming it all my eyebrows being gone and I was blaming it on my clothes wouldn’t fit me or they wouldn’t hide the sports bra like I was always finding other ways to blame it. I never was able to pinpoint that it was actually the bra. And when I did, that’s, that’s when everything changed. And I really started to deconstruct a bra, to reconstruct a bra in a lot of ways, and that’s how AnaOno was born.

Michael Swartz:
That’s incredible, solving a problem that you faced. So since launching, tell us a little bit about building the company. Like, did you start building it while you were still getting treatment or were you just creating it for yourself at first?

Dana Donofree:
So the idea really struck me a year after my diagnosis. So it was a few months and a year after my diagnosis was when I had sort of this revelation. In all honesty, I went to Google and I started looking for mastectomy bras. They all look like a grandma bra, that’s exactly what my experience was when I went fitting and trying on in stores and all of these things that already been through that process. And I sat there thinking to myself, you know, this must not be a big enough market, because if it was a big enough market, somebody else would have already been doing it. Because here I am, a 27 year old with breast cancer and I wasn’t diving for stats and I wasn’t as educated and informed as I am today, and I’m like, there must not be a lot of us and that’s why nobody’s doing it. So instead of thinking about building a business, I literally thought I was going to come home, I launched my business on Etsy. I literally came home and I thought, okay, here’s what I’m going to do every night after work, every night after work, I’m going to sew whatever bra orders I get on Etsy because like Etsy was a hot new thing, it was like just coming into the market. You had to be a maker and it was really, really creative at that point of view. And I’m like, and I’ll just sew the bras as women order them because maybe we, maybe we aren’t big enough, maybe it doesn’t, maybe we don’t matter enough, and that quickly, quickly changed. I think I maybe had my store on Etsy for about three or four weeks and then I just, you know, I went out and I built my own website and I launched my website and I went against everything that everybody was telling me. I would speak to business professionals, either in my family or connected through friends, and everybody would just tell me, and no offense, Michael, but mostly men, well, it sounds like you have a really niche business here and it sounds like a lifestyle business, and I’m not so sure, like if you should do this, and so I was constantly discouraged. I had one very prominent male in the cancer community tell me that I had the worst brand name. Nobody would ever remember it. I should call it something pink something. And that was like the last thing I wanted to do, the last thing I wanted to do was for AnaOno to represent my breast cancer or a breast cancer. It’s like we’re, we wake up remembering breast cancer, my bra doesn’t have to remind me that, too. And then I was also told that I would buy several stores that I took my bras to and to a few other places that I would never be able to sell a mastectomy bras online and I have proven all of those things wrong. So it was just I think it was something very out of the ordinary. I had to really, really be resilient in those moments, which thankfully I’m born to be, but most people would have been discouraged with hearing all of those negative comments from trusted individuals that have built successful businesses and just thinking like, oh my god, am I going to waste my time and my money and my energy doing something that just is going to fall flat on its face? And and I’m just, I’m so glad I didn’t listen to them, but I listened to patients like myself and I would have like little focus groups and I would ask people, oh, like, what are you doing about your bra after breast surgery? And it was like, I would open up Pandora’s box. It was like, I take this and I cut this and I sew this and I hack this and I do that, or it would be like, I don’t know, all I’m wearing is a sports bra, and like, nobody’s seen my naked body for five years. It was just like so many stories were wrapped around those experiences and what the brawl meant to that experience. And I thought to myself, this is so much more, like this is so much more than just a bra. Like the bra is a vehicle and an opportunity to get back to a life that you maybe once had or maybe you want to have again, or maybe you never had, but you want it and now you know it because you had cancer and it’s just a vehicle to find that path back to or into, I should maybe say, the new you. And that was really the position that I took from the very beginning, that it wasn’t just about the bra, it was about so much more than that. And I just wanted to empower, encourage others that you can get to the other side and you can live your life fully and beautifully and empowered. And this is all part of the healing process.

Michael Swartz:
That’s so powerful. I mean, so, AnaOno, it’s been launched for ten years, you said?

Dana Donofree:
Well, so idealized it ten years ago, we’ve been launched since May of 2014, officially, I technically launched at the end of 2013, but not with bras, with other products.

Michael Swartz:
So what’s the experience been since you’ve found, I mean, people stories, that’s exactly who you should be listening to, about what’s that actual problem compared to not seeing it in front of you. You experienced it, you talk to people, but what’s been the experience the past few years? I feel like you must have an incredible community of people who really are part of it.

Dana Donofree:
I will say, I mean, the memories, the stories, the accolades, the community, all of that is just been so much of what we are today. And I think in a lot of ways, being a part of the community of which I serve is a huge, huge benefit to doing this right and doing it the right way, both through advocacy but also through support and education. And the hardest thing when I started AnaOno was that we weren’t talking about breast cancer in the right ways. We knew people were dying of breast cancer and we knew people were living with breast cancer. And then there was maybe kind of a hush hush, quiet conversation about a surgery that was happening here or there, but we weren’t really talking about breast cancer. Like, how does breast cancer make, I will use women in this sentence because men and women do get breast cancer. But what does a woman feel when she loses her breasts? What does a relationship look like? What does emotions look like? What does intimacy look like? Sexuality, identity, all of these things, like it was my pressure for AnaOno to put those conversations on the map, because if we weren’t talking about those things, then nobody would understand why I was making a bra. And it almost seems reverse, right? Like I had to educate the general public as to what really happened in order to make a successful business. And it was so impactful that those that I served the patients, there was never any question about what I was doing. The emails started to pour in, the comments would come through Facebook with just words of encouragement and excitement that there was finally a bra for them. I mean, so many stories I have that I can share, but several are hugely impactful to just what AnaOno is today, and one of them was when I launched in 2014, I was with a dear late friend of mine, Jill Connelly, and she had a story that had gone and she and Hoda were friendly. So Hoda was kind enough to tweet, tweet out our launch party. And in doing so, I woke up the next morning with more emails in my inbox than I could have ever imagined. And one of those emails was from a young woman who had shared with me that she had lost her breasts to breast cancer, and she attempted a reconstruction and the reconstruction failed and she was living flat, so that means she had no breasts at all. And she had said that while she was still here, while she was still alive, that all she could dream about was a beautiful black bra that her partner could unhook from her in an intimate moment and how that bra needed to fit her flat chest because she had no breasts. And I just sat back and I’m like, wow, it’s not the breasts, or we call them foobs for fake boobs or the foobs, it’s about who we are inside and what we have lost because of a cancer diagnosis. And I mean, I even tell the story today, I have chills all over my body, but it was in that moment, that little small snippet of that person’s personal, intimate life behind closed doors that’s not often ever shared with strangers, to share that intimate moment with me and to make this plea of like, see me, see me, too. From there it was just like, we have to do more, we have to be more, I can’t just be a mastectomy bra, I have to be more than that. And that’s why with AnaOno, I call us boob inclusive because if you’ve got two boobs or one boob or no boobs or new boobs, we support you. And we have styles and fashions and looks and fits that work for your body type no matter what has manifested on the other side. And inclusion is obviously a hot topic now. And to us, it’s not just a skin tone and a body size, it’s so much more. We’ve got 4 million breast cancer patients living just in the United States. You know, we can arguably say predictably that one third to a half of them have no breasts at all. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of those walking around on the streets living our full lives that are completely excluded from every single lingerie store in existence, with the exception of AnaOno. And that’s a huge, that one story, that one patient story changed everything for me. And that’s just like one of multiple, multiples of stories that I could share.

Michael Swartz:
I find it just unbelievable. You really started changing the conversation about breast cancer. I think that is the most powerful thing of AnaOno, that I think you said it earlier, you flipped the script.

Dana Donofree:
Literally and figuratively.

Michael Swartz:
So where can people go to find AnaOno?

Dana Donofree:
We’re available online at AnaOno.com. So it’s A N A O N O.com, and we’re on Instagram, Facebook, pretty much every social channel at AnaOnoIntimates. And I just encourage those that are listening that if you haven’t been affected by breast cancer and I hope that you have not, that if you do know somebody or those around you that have to just give them that little nugget, because in reality we’re changing lives every day. But you can be a part of that because you don’t necessarily know what that person is suffering from, and it could be not feeling beautiful, but they’re too ashamed to say it. So even just offering the fact that, you know, that we’re out there and we’re available and we’re there to help guide them along, all of the bits and pieces of their story could really, really make a positive impact on them.

Michael Swartz:
And Dana, where can they follow you? Follow your journey?

Dana Donofree:
So, yeah, thank you. I’m on Instagram at DaynaDono and I have a very funny story, but my handle is DAYNADONO. And just in case, if you’re ever wondering we’re AnaOno actually came from it’s my name Dana Donofree without the double D’s.

Michael Swartz:
I love that.

Dana Donofree:
I’m glad you laughed. It’s usually my icebreaker early on, but I saved that one for last, I guess.

Michael Swartz:
So I got to, I got to ask you, how much do you get when you’re talking to somebody about AnaOno? The question, where did the name come from?

Dana Donofree:
Oh, I think like 100% of the time. And the reason why I brought that up with my Instagram handle, because there is no Y in my name. But there’s a long story short, I own both of them. I just I can’t hack my way back into my original Instagram account again going back to 2011 when it first started. And it’s funny because people do always ask, and I went through so many names before I came to AnaOno because almost everything is like trademarked and already reserved. And my best friend from college, she said to me, she’s goes Dana, it’s your name without the double D’s. And we were laughing so, so hard because the actual funny part of it is like I was a B-cup on a really, really good day. So if you knew me before breast cancer, the joke even has a second underlying giggle to it. So my high school friends think it’s really funny.

Michael Swartz:
And the name works, the logo is incredible, it looks like a fashion brand.

Dana Donofree:
I wanted it to be not medical. There is a medical need for our product, it is covered by health insurance. You can apply to use your health insurance online with a prescription from your doctor. But I didn’t want it to feel like that because just because I was a medical device or I needed a medical device, it didn’t mean it needed to look like one.

Michael Swartz:
That’s unbelievable. Well, Dana, I appreciate you taking the time. And for, for all the listeners follow Dana, because her story, her brand, it’s incredible work that she’s doing. So thank you so much, Dana, really appreciate it.

Dana Donofree:
Well, I appreciate it. And thank you to all the listeners. And if you took anything away today, please, men and women and non-binary, do your monthly breast exams because you will detect an issue before any medical professional ever will.

Michael Swartz:
Love it. Thank you, all the listeners, and I’ll see you next week.

Michael Swartz:
Hey listeners, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Everyone Hates Healthcare. If you have a healthcare story, we want to hear it. All you got to do is shoot me an email with My Healthcare Story in the subject line to MyStory@HealthKarma.org. Also, check out all the episode notes, resources, and more ways you can take control of your healthcare. All you got to do is just visit HealthKarma.org/Podcast. While you’re on there, help us out, don’t forget to drop us a rating, a review, and share it with all your family and friends. Can’t wait to see you next week.

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