About two years ago, Marthe Young was shopping online. Instead of filling her cart with the typical clothes, toiletries and household staples, the Easthampton resident was searching for a prosthetic. Young was recovering from a mastectomy following a breast cancer diagnosis that had hit as a “total surprise.”
“When I went back to work, I was really self-conscious,” Young, 70, said. “If somebody you work with knows you had a mastectomy, they’re going to be looking at your chest.”
While her daughter jokingly told her, “Ma, you’re 70 years old, just put a sock in it,” Young wanted something better than a sock from her dresser drawer. To find the right fit, she scrolled past sticky silicone — an option that screamed “sweat” in the summer heat — and knitted prosthetics shaped like bowling balls.
Finally, she said, “I’m a designer, I’ll make my own.”
Young enlisted the help of Alida Satterfield, a friend of more than 40 years who lives in Franklin County. Like Young, Satterfield had undergone a mastectomy after a doctor caught 15 breast cancer cells. Within a week, she was at her first radiation appointment.
Looking back, Satterfield remembered the “team of women” at the hospital who literally held her hand through the operation.
“They come by, say hello, always put their hand on your arm, even in the visits … like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m here, I’m here,'” Satterfield recalled in a slow, even tone. With a chuckle, she added, “I grabbed onto that one.”
Both Young and Satterfield described their recovery as a strange process.
“It’s a weird sensation of being separated from it —kind of like you’re doing it to somebody else, like you’re taking care of somebody else’s body,” Satterfield said.
With healing came the question: “You’ve got this space, and now what do you do?” Satterfield said.
“Okay, baggy shirts, here we come,'” she added with a laugh.
Like Young, Satterfield was disappointed by the online inventory of “bowling balls,” silicone and what she described as “shoulder pads.” When Young shared her plan to take matters into her own knitting needles, Satterfield wasn’t surprised.
“My first reaction was, ‘Of course she is, she thinks of solutions and how to make and procure them for lots of things,” Satterfield said. “I said, ‘This is so perfect.'”
Young’s crafting expertise spans several disciplines. She teaches weaving classes at WEBS in Northampton, where she worked for 14 years. Following her surgery, her doctors informed her that her hours spent at the spinning wheel fast-tracked her recovery by keeping her body moving and her foot tapping.
To build the perfect prosthetic, Young relied on her knack for knitting and drew on her past work as a medical illustrator in the operating rooms at Baystate Franklin Medical Center. After a few trials, she finessed a final design: a “squishy, soft,” machine-washable, stuffed prosthetic shaped like a teardrop.
“It’s engineering,” Young said.
After an early prototype shifted out of place and assumed the identity of a shoulder pad, Young added a fabric flap for users to slip securely under their bras. Available in every cup size, the design allows users to adjust the internal stuffing to find their ideal shape. She named her creation “My Bosom Buddy.”
“This is my way of giving back,” Young said.
For Young and Satterfield, they often forget about their Bosom Buddies, and that’s the point, they said.
“It sort of completes the process after surgery … To have this solution where you don’t have to go back and keep thinking about it and having it remind you of that danger … it can kind of go away,” Satterfield explained. “It puts you further along that path of peace.”
Young noted that feedback from her first three customers has been unanimously positive, with each woman embracing the invention with gratitude. According to Young, her primary care physician, oncologist and dermatologist have also echoed that praise, each telling her that more patients need to hear about her creation.
“We want comfort, we want dignity,” Young said of people who have experienced mastectomies. “Whether you’re on a cash register or whether you’re a CEO, it doesn’t matter — as a woman, you want to feel like a woman … It gives you confidence.”
When Young spreads the word about “My Bosom Buddy” at her WEBS classes and in other circles, the topic often bypasses small talk. Instead, it sparks conversations with fellow breast cancer survivors about their shared experiences.
“It’s almost like a sisterhood, and I want to help the sisterhood,” Young said.
