MINNEAPOLIS — The team at Hennepin Healthcare EMS is taking breast cancer awareness and prevention to the next level, hitting the streets with an ambulance decked out in the a pink paint scheme.
The new pink ribbon theme was also a way for fellow staffers to show support for Ali Gaffney, a Hennepin paramedic who's been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Gaffney says the pink color scheme on this ambulance is a daily reminder that her co-workers and managers have been behind her in her battle with cancer.
"It’s a healing journey. And it’s been a lot of ups and downs, but this is a huge up part of the journey," Gaffney told KARE.
"I get to tell my stories, my journey, how my co-workers and management all just like came behind me, supported me, and have been there for me."
Driving the ambulance tends to be a conversation starter that gives Gaffney a chance to share her story.
"When I was 26, I noticed a lump in my chest. I talked to my OB-GYN about it, and she just said, 'You're too young, it doesn't run in your family, don't worry about it'."
Ali's lump was stable for four years, and her physician said it that was probably a benign fibrous tumor. But one day while wearing a bullet proof vest with a metal plate inside it, Ali was kicked in the chest by a patient.
“The force of the kick essentially hit the tumor and it broke off and went up into my neck, into a lymph node."
The lump had moved into her sternum. At age 30, Ali was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She wishes now that her doctor had ordered an ultrasound of her lump when she first found it.
"My cancer, it's considered metastatic. But we're very thankful because it has stayed very contained to like up here (by her chest) and hasn't really spread anywhere else to my body."
The EMS unit had already started selling pink EMS patches to raise funds for breast cancer in 2021, a year before Ali was diagnosed. After coworkers learned she was sick, they started selling lapel pins with her badge number blazoned across it in pink.
They also accommodated Gaffney's illness, swapping shifts with her and at times allowing her to do her chemo infusion treatments during her shifts.
"I’m still going to treatment, and I’m still learning new things about my cancer, and I still have scans every three months," Gaffney explained.
"And to see whether it’s a pin on their bullet proof vest, or it’s the pink shirt they’re wearing, or it’s them being excited and sending me a photo in the ambulance, it has been a blessing."
The staff kept the ambulance makeover a secret from Ali so they could surprise her with it. Footage captured by fellow paramedics showed Ali crying tears of joy as the rig rolled in, moving through a cloud of pink stage smoke.
"It’s so pretty! Those were my first words. It's so pretty! Absolutely incredible!"
Deputy Chief Charlie Sloan was the one who came up with the idea of the pink ribbon ambulance
“It was great that we were able to do this, and not just for Ali but for everybody going through whatever their journey might be going through," Sloan told KARE.
"Almost everyone knows someone with breast cancer or has been affected by it in some way."
On the inside the pink like any other ambulance.
"It's 100 percent fully functional. The only difference between this and every other Hennepin EMS ambulance you'll see on the street is the graphics scheme," Sloan explained.
"And to see it out there on the street and see it getting the kind of attention it's getting is definitely the intended effect."
Gaffney also find herself trying to explain to patients that it's really an ambulance despite outward appearances.
"We had a patient with breast cancer, and she asked, 'They make pink ambulances?' And we're, like, "It's a pink ambulance. And it's a real ambulance!"