BRIDGTON, Maine — A gift to a Lakes Region hospital aims to provide top-notch care for women in the area.
Bridgton Hospital unveiled its brand-new mammography machine on Wednesday. The $380,000 machine was a gift from the Bridgton Hospital Guild and the Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation.
Until now, Interim President Stephany Jacques said, patients had to travel to Lewiston or Portland for the same advanced screenings. Now, they're close to home.
"We’ve actually started providing the testing. We’re already seeing an increase in volumes of women coming in to seek services for 3D mammography," Jacques said. "We’re also coming up on October, which is breast cancer awareness month. And, so, we’ll really be pushing and encouraging women in the community to come in and get their mammography screenings for the year as well."
The woman who will primarily be operating it, Alissa Noble, has value that is hard to measure.
"About 10 years ago, I had my screening mammogram in this very room," Noble said, standing in front of her workstation next to the new machine.
Ten years prior, Noble had been screening others for breast cancer for eight years at Bridgton. Then, her own machine found the disease in her.
She fought back and, for the past 10 years, when her patients have needed to hear it she's said, “I know how you feel.”
"I still worked when I was having chemo on the other side of the hospital," Noble said. "I would still come over and work … It just gave me a different perspective."
Jacques said the machine came just in time ahead of October's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.