Bigger and pinker each year, the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center’s annual Pig Party was held on March 4, marking the seventh celebration of a beloved tradition on National Pig Day.
“The Pig Party was started by a patient more than eight years go, which is what makes the day so spectacular,” says Martha Young, program manager of Patient and Family Education at Dana-Farber. Since then, she adds, “many other Jimmy Fund Clinic patients have helped carry on the tradition by adding their own special personal touches to the day.” Like 9-year old Thomas Joffrin, mayor of Pig Day in 2014, who decided that “Pin the Tail on the Pig” was a must for this year’s celebration.
Doctors, nurses, and Jimmy Fund Clinic staff dress up in pig ears and pink shirts, patients paint piggy banks and enjoy pig-themed cake, and the playroom and infusion room are wrapped in “fun and silliness,” Young says.
Even those who come to the clinic expecting a routine visit are pulled into the excitement of the pig-themed day. “I have been coming to the Jimmy Fund Clinic for eight years, and I have never been here on Pig Day,” says one patient. “This has been such an awesome surprise.”
View photos from this year’s Pig Day in the slideshow below:
