Kellie Pickler brings awareness for breast reconstruction

When the Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine approached Boondock’s Pub to host a concert for breast reconstruction awareness, Carole Keating hadn’t thought much about it.

“I’ve learned a lot since we’ve been working with (SIU),” she said. “When you think about breast cancer, you don’t think about life after cancer.”

That’s precisely why SIU and Boondocks are hosting an awareness event with the help of country music star Kellie Pickler. Pickler will play a show Thursday night at Boondocks to help raise breast reconstruction awareness or BRA.

Les Jebson, an administrator at SIU School of Medicine, said they chose Pickler because of she’s a big name with an established dedication to breast cancer awareness. In 2012 Pickler shaved her head on national television when she found out that her best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since then, the country music personality has been a major voice in awareness for the disease.

“She believes in the cause,” Jebson said. “She knows how important this is.”

It’s hard not to be aware of breast cancer itself nowadays. Everyone from individuals to major corporations mark every October as breast cancer awareness month by painting everything pink and encouraging women everywhere to get tested. When people think of breast cancer itself, they think of battle: the chemo, the radiation, losing all your hair and going under the knife and removing a woman’s breasts. But very rarely do people ever think of the aftermath.

“You have cancer. You battled cancer. Now what can we do to help reconstruct the damage caused by breast cancer?” Jebeson said.

The SIU School of Medicine’s Department of Plastic Surgery is trying to get the word out to women who have been affected by breast cancer that there are options for restoring what had been lost, and sometimes those options can be covered under your health insurance plan.

Jebson said the mission is threefold: first and foremost, the event is to raise awareness for breast reconstruction. The second is to raise awareness for the types of resources that are available. And finally, Jebson hopes that the event will make people proud of the SIU Department of Plastic Surgery.

“The cool thing is that the people of Springfield and central Illinois should be proud of the fact that we have a group of world-class trained specialists in plastic reconstruction,” Jebson said.

For Keating and everyone at Boondocks, they were simply happy to help and were excited to bring awareness to the public through their music venue.

“I was honored that they chose us to be part of it, to help them,” Keating said. 

— Contact Carla Jimenez: 788-1542, carla.jimenez@sj-r.com, twitter.com/CarlaJimenezSJR.

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Breast Reconstruction Awareness concert with Kellie Pickler

When: 7 p.m. Thursday; early admission 5:30 p.m. with VIP ticket

Where: Boondocks, 2909 N. Dirksen Parkway

Tickets: $20 general admission; $75 for VIP; visit boondockspub.com for more info.