Fundraising for Maidstone breast cancer machine
Former Medway MP Tracey Crouch joined 7 other women to trek up Kilimanjaro to raise more than 150 thousand pounds to fund the equipment.
Kristin Hawthorne reports.
Kristin Hawthorne reports.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00A new, state-of-the-art piece of equipment has now been introduced to the Breast Cancer Unit at the Maidstone Hospital.
00:07This is thanks to a determined group of women that trekked the Kilimanjaro Mountain in Africa,
00:12raising over £150,000.
00:16For the women that took part, this was not, however, the first difficult challenge that they had been on,
00:20as many have trekked through their own journeys with breast cancer.
00:24Among them was former Kent MP Tracey Crouch.
00:27I was a patient here at Maidstone Tambridge Wells Trust and I went through the Peggy Wood Centre
00:32and had two lumpectomies and chemotherapy and radiotherapy as a consequence of breast cancer.
00:38So it's rather interesting now to be able to see the machine that people who have been diagnosed today will benefit from.
00:45The idea of Kilimanjaro 2 actually climbing the mountain was based on my sister being diagnosed with breast cancer
00:51and it was really early days of Covid, we were on Zoom at home and she was going through her chemotherapy treatment
00:57and I just said to her, when this is all over, shall we climb a mountain?
01:01And she said, absolutely.
01:04We were an amazing team, there were several challenges and I wouldn't lie, it was very, very tough eight days.
01:11We were singing quite a lot, we had our own Spotify playlist, we listened to podcasts together
01:16and we just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
01:19There were some incredible life-changing moments and there were some times where we just wanted to give up
01:24and we couldn't stay another night in a freezing cold tent, but it was the team that got us through it.
01:30Thanks to Tracey and the rest of the women who took part in the trek up the Kilimanjaro,
01:34this piece of equipment has now been introduced to the Breast Cancer Unit at the Maidstone Hospital.
01:39The equipment makes surgeries more efficient, targeted and quicker and really helps a lot of people
01:45and will help a lot of people into the future.
01:47The most challenging part of the breast cancer journey is waiting for results,
01:51whether it is to find out whether they have breast cancer, especially after surgery,
01:55when they're waiting for results to find out whether they need more surgery or what other treatment they would need.
02:01This machine is hopefully aiming to reduce that waiting time that we currently have for pathology results to come back.
02:08Now we can expedite that process, speed up the results and hopefully impact the outcome for these patients.
02:17So thanks to these women, the new advanced equipment will help speed up diagnosis,
02:22reduce waiting times and ease anxiety for women facing breast cancer across Kent.
02:27Kristen Hawthorne, KMTV in Maidstone.