One of the most difficult things we can hear is that a loved one is diagnosed with cancer. Very few of us anticipate that it could happen to us but when it does, those few words change our lives immediately. That is obviously the way that Bob Carey felt when his wife, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer. He knew that they were facing a rough road so he decided to do something that would lighten the load for her.
Bob is a photographer and he knew that he could use his pictures to change her life and pick up her mood. The thing was, he didn’t know what to do so she would smile, even when she was in pain. There was one thing that came to his mind and although it was a little goofy, he knew that he was on to something big.
Bob went out to purchase a bright pink Tutu, the kind that would make a seven-year-old girl squeal with glee. He then put it on and took everything else off. What he ended up doing was creating a series of pictures that had everyone laughing out loud.
Bob was soon taking a new Tutu photo of himself in all kinds of strange locations. We are very thankful that he decided to go many places.
“When Linda would go in for treatment, she would take the images on her phone and the women would look at them and it would make them laugh and make the time pass,” Bob said.
The images turned out to be quite a hit. Both Linda and her care team loved what they saw and then Bob had another idea. If those pictures were successful in cheering up his wife, imagine what they could do for other cancer patients.
That is when Bob started “The Tutu Project.” It is a fundraiser that tries to bring in $50,000 every year to help patients pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance. They even have their own website that says “together we can reduce the stress that goes along with a breast cancer diagnosis.”
This project has now gone far beyond what Bob ever thought possible with those initial pictures. They are now even inviting other people to take pictures of their own.
“We believe people touched by breast cancer deserve more than one month of activism, they deserve daily empowerment. That’s why we created Dare2Tutu, a fundraising campaign that uses Bob Carey’s famous tutu to cheer up people living with breast cancer. You can activate #Dare2Tutu in your school, with your athletic team, throughout your office, and everywhere else in between.”
Along with those fundraising efforts, Bob has also published a book and a calendar showing his own tutu images.
When you consider the fact that he started the project to make his wife laugh, he has really gone to a whole new plane. You can watch more about this project in the following video: