The Haliburton Highlands Health Services Foundation will be having its Radiothon Aug. 15 and 16. The Radiothon will again be hosted by 93.5 MooseFM. The intent is to improve healthcare by bringing mammography services to the Haliburton hospital.
Melanie Klodt Wong, executive director of the Foundation said, “Radiothon has been an amazing staple in the community for raising funds. We’re really grateful to MooseFM for hosting and for Minden Subaru for being a corporate sponsor and allowing us to take over the radio station for two days and do marathon, 12-hour days, to raise as much money as we can. I think what’s important to community is that it gets people excited about what we’re raising money for.”
In the Highlands, at least 6,000 women don’t have access to regular breast cancer screenings. They need to travel outside of the County in order to get mammograms.
The Radiothon will feature interviews with survivors, who will talk about the importance of screening, health care specialists, and those who have been touched by the healthcare they’ve received at HHHS.
Richard Muir is one of those patients whose life was saved while in care at the Haliburton hospital. He will be matching donations up to $100,000 for the Radiothon.
Muir is a businessman from Toronto who cottages at Eagle Lake. In September 2022, he went into sudden cardiac arrest for four minutes and was helped by nurses and doctors to recover. Muir remembers hearing the beeping sound of the heart rate monitoring machine and hearing nurses screaming, “we’re losing him.” The businessman described the procedure he had as “life-changing, excellent care.”
Muir is matching donations to express thanks.
Breast cancer survivors
Tammy Rea details how she got a letter during COVID-19 saying she was due for a mammogram, and how she’d normally be the kind of person to just put something like that aside, but for some reason, made a call, and was scheduled in promptly.
“Eventually, it turned out that I had stage-zero breast cancer, which is amazing, because even when my surgeon knew where it was, she still couldn’t feel it. Nothing else would have found that. But the mammogram picked it up. So, the mammogram meant, and only the mammogram meant, that I was diagnosed at stage zero.”
On the importance of getting a mammography unit at the Haliburton hospital, Rea said, “I have the gut feeling my friends in the city get a better shot at fighting breast cancer because they’re diagnosed earlier. I think if we have the machine here, the machine is so modern and new, it takes less time and is less painful.”
Rea also participated in a 15-km swimming challenge with the Canadian Cancer Society to raise funds for mammography services.
Darlene Armstrong, who was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, at the age of 45, was shocked at her diagnosis. “I had a healthy and very active lifestyle, so it was very surprising for me to discover a lump.”
Armstrong added, “when I heard we were getting a mammography unit here, I was excited, because I had to travel, as does everybody else in this community. I traveled to Peterborough, and so the fact people won’t have to travel is huge. I’m incredibly fortunate I have the means to travel. I have a vehicle, but lots of people in our County don’t, and it’s just going to be so beneficial to people in our community.
The Radiothon will be broadcasting from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and is hosted by Rick Lowes. The number to call is 705-457-1580.
