Superior and compassionate breast care with cutting edge technology

Breast Cancer Survivor Raises Money for State-of-the-Art Digital Mammography Center

In 1996, facing surgery and radiation therapy, Vicki Adkins swore she wouldn’t allow breast cancer to change her life. But a chance encounter in a hospital corridor channeled her determination into a 2.4 million GBP state-of-the-art breast care unit that provides diagnostic and outpatient services for the women of Hertfordshire, England.

The idea for the unit came to the quiet mother of two as she sat with her husband in a suburban London hospital corridor waiting to be seen by her breast specialist. The National Health Service (NHS) hospital lacked a dedicated breast care section and waiting area. “There was a young lady who’d obviously been told she had cancer. She came out of the exam room and just ran down that corridor with her husband behind her, absolutely sobbing,” Vicki said. “I thought ‘This is the 21st century. Women shouldn’t have to put up with this.’”

Vicki approached the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust with her plan to raise funds for a space where breast cancer patients could be screened, have consultations, and receive care in a comfortable, private environment—a space that most English NHS hospitals (which are publicly funded) do not have. She also vowed that the center would have the best equipment possible. She chose the Hologic Selenia digital mammography system. “I’d never done fundraising before or even been on a committee, but I knew when I saw that lady something triggered something inside me and I said ‘I’ve got to change things.’ From then on it sort of snowballed into bigger and bigger things,” she laughed.

The Queen Elizabeth II—Vicki Adkins Breast Unit features a pair of Selenia digital mammography systems, a Hologic Upright Digital Stereo unit, a Multicare Stereotactic table and even a tea bar staffed by cancer survivors.

The experience, Vicki affirmed, “made me realize that if there’s something that you want in life you actually can achieve it. But it does take a lot of guts, sometimes.” •