HANCOCK COUNTY — When Myra Bleill created a fundraiser in 1998 to help provide mammograms to uninsured and under-insured women, people came to the event in the Hancock Regional Hospital basement and raised a total of $10,000.
At that time, mammograms cost $65 each, Bleill said. Some 26 women received mammograms through that first year’s effort, she said.
As Bleill, the former executive director of the Hancock Regional Hospital Foundation, looked around the packed ballroom at Adaggio’s Banquet Hall on Thursday night, she was thrilled to see how much the event has grown since then. More than 400 people purchased tickets to the 20th annual Women Helping Women banquet, hosted by the Hancock Health Foundation, which raised more than $100,000 to provide breast health screenings, including 3D mammograms, to women who would not otherwise be able to afford them.
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Last year’s event, which raised some $77,000, provided care for 168 women through the Women’s Health Clinic at Hancock Regional Hospital, including 3D mammography and other technologies that make it easier to find cancer earlier, said Nancy Davis, Hancock Health Foundation executive director.
Current and former care providers reflected on how the landscape of preventive care has changed and how the Women’s Health Task Force has helped more women get the care they need in Hancock, Shelby and Rush counties in particular.
In 1998, if a woman couldn’t afford a mammogram, she just wouldn’t get one, said Beth Turpin, a nurse practitioner at the Women’s Health Clinic. In comparison, five women were diagnosed with breast cancer last year through the money raised by Women Helping Women. They would not have been able to pay for mammograms or ultrasounds otherwise, said Becky Pohland, clinic coordinator.
Women Helping Women also provides funding for a genetic screening program offered at the hospital, which helps pinpoint possible gene mutations in high-risk patients, she said.
Through the fundraising efforts of the Women’s Health Task Force and Women Helping Women, 3D mammography will be offered at the hospital, at the Parkway Imaging Center nearby, and at the Gateway Imaging Center, a low-cost lab facility currently under construction at the northwest corner of County Roads 200N and 600W, Turpin said.
“The Gateway Imaging Center will allow patients on the west side of the county, in New Palestine and McCordsville, access to the best technology,” she said. “Our goal is to make 3D mammography the standard of care in Hancock County.”
Thursday night, the event paid tribute to Mary Lynn Wolfe, a radiologist and foundation board member who died in April in a plane crash in Kalkaska, Michigan. She and her sister had collaborated on a quilt to be auctioned off at the event. Wolfe, who had retired from her position in 2013, had been a dedicated volunteer to Women Helping Women throughout the years, officials said.
Debbie Muegge, who worked with Wolfe, remembered her as someone who made a difference daily. Wolfe had a way of humming soothingly during procedures, and her laugh was infectious, Muegge said.
“I still have patients ask for her,” she said before Marc Huber auctioned off a quilt Wolfe and her sister, Linda Perry made. The red, black and green quilt sold for $2,550 after a bidding war among several guests.
One patient of the Women’s Health Center, Treasa Beavers, described her experience being diagnosed with Stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma earlier this year. She made an appointment at the clinic for an infected cyst on her left breast, but through ultrasounds and 3D mammograms paid for through funding from Women Helping Women, two tumors were located on her right breast.
“It’s amazing the way things went so smooth,” she said. “If it weren’t for the doctors and the girls at the clinic, I wouldn’t have known; there was no lump to be found. I appreciate everything they’ve done, and it wouldn’t be possible without Women Helping Women. I couldn’t have taken care of myself without it.”
Hearing such stories of early detection made possible through the caring and the heart of the community overjoyed Bleill, she said.
At that first event, inspired by Bleill’s out-of-state friend hosting something similar, the mostly female attendance draped themselves in pink feather boas and ate dinner served to them by an all-male wait staff, Bleill recalled.
The attendance at Thursday’s fundraiser was more evenly split between men and women, which Bleill said makes perfect sense, because not only are men affected by breast cancer’s impact on the lives of their female loved ones, but men can also have breast cancer themselves.
“This has come so far since then,” she said. “Tonight, there are a lot of people here who have come to all 20 events. It’s great to celebrate the fact that we are here with so many survivors.”
