She Wasn’t Alone, Because of You

My patient, Maria, has been through a lot.

She lost both her son and her husband to cancer. Then, she received her own diagnosis: lymphoma. “What am I going to do?” she asked me, eyes wide with fear.

I reminded Maria of her own strength—and that she wasn’t facing this alone. Maria had an entire care team at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH) by her side. And thanks to support from people like you, she could count on getting the lifesaving care she needed, right here in her own community.

“I knew I was in the best hands at OTMH,” Maria says. “They know what they’re doing. That’s a good feeling when you’re going through this.”

The support we receive from our community gives me so much hope. Because of caring people like you, my colleagues and I can offer patients like Maria leading-edge cancer care and treatment, with the advanced equipment and technology they need to heal.

I’m incredibly grateful for your monthly support. And as we step into the season of giving, I hope you’ll consider making a one-time gift on top of your ongoing generosity. Your holiday donation will help us go even further to upgrade critical areas of care at OTMH—like our Interventional Radiology (IR) Suite, a specialized area of medicine that plays a key role in cancer care.

Right now, there’s even more reason to give. Sisters Carol Vesters and Annette Godziek are generously matching all donations up to $100,000. That means your gift this season will go twice as far to fund lifesaving technology and urgently needed upgrades across the hospital, including our IR Suite.

The IR Suite sits inside our Radiology Department. It’s a high-tech room where our doctors use imaging tools like CT, ultrasound, and MRI to guide tiny instruments through small incisions to perform procedures.

In cancer care, IR allows us to perform minimally invasive procedures like biopsies, tumour ablation, embolization, and fluid drainage. It’s precise, often less risky than traditional surgery, and can mean less pain and faster recovery for our patients.

But the equipment in our IR Suite is reaching end of life. It urgently needs to be replaced. A new, state-of-the-art hybrid IR Suite will allow us to perform more complex procedures here at OTMH—so patients won’t need to travel far from home to get the care they need.

Thanks to community support, Maria didn’t have to leave town to get her care. After confirming the extent of her cancer with a CT scan, she began chemotherapy and immunotherapy—right here at OTMH.

“I’m so grateful I was able to have my treatment here,” Maria says. “My hospital had everything I needed to get through this.”

That’s only possible because of you. Government funding doesn’t cover hospital equipment or technology. Without donor support, we’d be waiting years to bring this lifesaving equipment to our hospital.

“When I was in treatment, I saw how many other people were being treated here,” Maria told me. “I saw the huge difference your giving makes.”

And I see it too—every single day.

Today, I hope we can count on you again. Your special holiday gift will help bring new, cutting-edge equipment and technology to OTMH, where it will immediately improve care for patients like Maria.

With gratitude,

Dr. Andrea Lee

Program Director, Cancer Care
Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital

P.S. Please consider making a holiday gift today. Your donation will be matched, doubling your impact for patients who rely on OTMH for lifesaving cancer care.