Episode 792: Lisa Crites: From Breast Cancer Survivor to Inventor | Beautifully Unbroken

What was it in your life and your experience after your surgery that gave rise to the invention of the shower shirt?

I was wholly annoyed.

After my bilateral mastectomy, I showered in a plastic trash bag on and off for a few months.

because of surgical drains.

They're sutured into your armpit, and doctors and or surgeons advise you not to shower without protection because of waterborne illnesses.

Common sense, what comes out of the tap is not sterile.

Bacteria, pathogens, toxins are in tap water, and that can increase the chances of waterborne illness.

They say either don't shower, put a trash bag on, duct tape, plastic, and that was unacceptable.

I was 41 years old and I kept thinking, can't the medical industry do better than this for women? I have just had my breast amputated and I'm showering in a plastic trash bag.

That became my cathartic project, the fuel to invent a product to where breast cancer patients would have something protective instead of a trash bag to shower in after breast cancer and breast amputation.

I had doctors tell me there's no way and R&D people said there's no way you can bring this to market in a year and a half.

I said, you watch me.

And I did.

And there was a goal was to get it on air October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I knew because I worked in TV for so long.

I knew what the reporters were thinking, the producers and the editors.

And I knew the story would sell.

former television medical reporter, turned breast cancer survivor, turned patented inventor of a class one medical device for breast cancer patients to shower in.

And it worked.

I started reaching out.

Anybody and everybody I could talk to, whether they be people who own patents, individuals who had brought medical devices to market, and not one person ever said they wouldn't help me.

Everybody I reached out to just to pick their brain, just to run an idea by them, everyone helped me.

And I've always thought about that for many years, that I will always help anybody that asks.

And that was, again, one more time, the basis of the book, to help those people out there, to push them a little more forward to think, you know what, my idea may be good.

You know what, breast cancer is not always a death sentence.