Joyce Smith Patient Story – Video Transcript

I’ve heard about the Mammo-Marathon through work. I was riding in the elevator and it’s posted in big letters on the elevator and us girls from housekeeping were sitting around the table talking about and we read it in the Hamot Today. If you work at Hamot you know everything that’s going on. So I thought it would be a beautiful way for me to get my mammogram which I was quite late on and I didn’t have to take time away from work.

I’ve been a mammographer for over 35 years and through all my experience with patients you get to talk to them a lot and they start telling you about all the people they knew that haven’t gotten their mammogram yet. So I thought well wouldn’t it be neat if had one day that we could offer 24 hours of mammograms to these ladies. This way there would be no excuses.

Because of the Mammo-Marathon they detected cancer of my right breast. Had I not went to it I would’ve never found it. It was caught early enough and I’m cancer free.

Because our mission is to serve and this is how I came up with the idea of by listening to our patients and what better way to start serving is by listening to them, what their needs are and to put this wonderful event forth. And Hamot gives us the tools to do our job and technology to help these women.

I credit the Mammo-Marathon for saving my life. Hamot Hospital literally saved my life.