Tanner Ta Tas Support Local Women with Breast Cancer

First there was one. Then another. And another. Michelle Amari and Erin Ficociello watched as woman after woman in their Woburn High School Class of ’87—a total of seven now—were diagnosed with breast cancer.

They attended a fundraiser for a friend, the third classmate to be diagnosed.

Then they decided to walk in the Avon walk for breast cancer research. They even started a fundraiser, the Pink Bash, to raise the entry fee of $1,800 each for the walk. They raised about $6,500 that night and about $3,500 more on line. Over several years, they raised more than $75,000 for the Avon effort.

Then, before Christmas, 2008, Amari got a call from Ficociello. 

“I think I have a lump (in my breast)," Amari recounted Ficociello saying. “Can you come over?” She did.

The next day, Amari, a nurse, went to work, at Ficociello’s insistence. Ficociello went to the doctor.

Amari got a text message from her friend. First, Ficociello was told to stay in her johnny for more testing. That’s never a good sign, the women agreed. That afternoon, Ficociello went for a biopsy.

On Dec. 12, 2008, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her doctor came out of a holiday party, she said, to tell her.

She had surgery, a double mastectomy and her ovaries were removed. She started chemotherapy. She received her last treatment in May of 2010.

During that experience, Ficociello and Amari said they began to think about the $75,000 they had raised for the Avon effort. They asked themselves, Amari said, “How can we better serve our community?”

They decided to form a foundation to help other women in Woburn, particularly women under age 40, deal with their diagnosis and treatment. In early 2010, they received the paperwork creating the Tanner Ta Ta Foundation. They are its co-presidents.

“We try to focus on support and care,” Ficociello said.

“The day these two came to my door changed my life,” said Suzanne Clurman,  a group member. She was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. The group helped her feel that “I was not alone.”

"Now there are more than 35 of us," Amari said.

Statistically, one woman in 233 under age 40 is diagnosed with breast cancer, Ficociello said.

In their graduating class of 175 women, “We have seven.”

With Ficociello’s first-hand experience, the foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, began to put together baskets of items that she and friends who had gone through the same experience found useful. Clurman recommended Pellegrino mineral water. A nurse named a specific brand of hand lotion. Tums. Peanut butter. Each woman also includes a note in the basket.

When Ficociello hears about another woman being diagnosed with breast cancer, she tries not to flash back to her own experience.

“To be a healthy survivor, you need to have a certain amnesia,” she said, about “what’s behind you.”

“You have to stay in the moment.”

The group has lost two members, Amari noted.

As for the group’s name, at first the duo used just the Tanner Foundation.

“We’re becoming more brazen,” Ficociello quipped Thursday morning as she and Amari gathered to do some organizing for the group’s annual fundraiser, the “Pink Bash” on Friday, March 25, at the Woburn Country Club. For the night, club bartenders will mix their famous pink martinis in the group’s honor. What to order? Ta Ta Tinis, of course.

This past October, Mayor Scott Galvin proclaimed the month “Ta Ta Breast Cancer Month,” Ficociello said.

The group has begun to develop a reputation by word of mouth. Woburn resident Mary Paris, one of a family of 10 children, who was raised by her dad after her mom died, made a special gift to the organization, Amari said, at Christmas. Paris and her siblings used some of the money from their father to fill stockings for some 20 children of women being treated for breast cancer, customized to the children.

When another city resident and breast cancer survivor turned 50, Ficociello said the woman asked friends to donate to the foundation.

Being diagnosed under 40 raises different issues than later in life, according to Ficociello. For one, younger women often have still-young children. She was diagnosed when one of her daughters was in kindergarten.

Ficociello had worked in Wesford, at the high school, as the director of an alternative education program for 10 years, until she was diagnosed. After taking some time away, she is beginning to substitute teach and tutor.

Amari is a nurse. She works at a hospice. She had worked at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital.

This year, twelve Ta Tas—breast cancer survivors all—will take turns greeting guests at the door the night of the fifth annual bash, March 25, a Friday, Amari said, so all guests will meet a breast cancer survivor.

The event will run from 7 p.m. to midnight. Tickets are $20 each. Organizers urge people to get tickets in advance of the party because, they said, so many people attend. So many people come, Amari and Ficociello said, that they’ve arranged for a shuttle ride from parking down the street from the country club, and possibly farther away.

For ticket information, go to www.TannerTaTas.org or call Ficociello at 978-804-3366 or Amari at 781-608-0572. There is also a Facebook event page for the fundraiser.

Besides offering support to women diagnosed with breast cancer, the group urges women not to ignore their breast health, Amari said, especially women around the age of 40. 

A statistician is looking at the incidence of breast cancer in Woburn women, according to Ficociello.

Breast cancer is “not,” she emphasized, “only an ‘old woman’s disease.’”