Osna Fund has been set up with the aim of raising £75,000 to buy an Osna unit for the Breast Care Department at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.
Osna Fund has been set up with the aim of raising £75,000 to buy an Osna unit for the Breast Care Department at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton. Although already well on the way to reaching their target thanks to local events and kind donations in the latter part of 2012, an official launch party is being held at the Cosy Club in Taunton on Wednesday 6 February to really start to put this worthy cause on the map!
Osna, a machine offering Intra-operative Sentinel Node Analysis, looks at the DNA in the lymph glands during the first operation. This means that Consultants can tell ladies who don’t have cancer cells in their lymph glands that they are fine at the end of the operation. It also means that they can remove all of the glands if they need to in the same operation, which cuts down the time to any further treatment needed. Currently, ladies have to wait up to 10 days for the results of lymph gland checks and, if necessary, may need a further operation 3-4 weeks later.
One of the fundraisers and trustees for the Osna machine is Debra Crisp, a local breast cancer survivor. As Debra said: "Living with a cancer diagnosis puts you on an emotional rollercoaster, so being able to get the answers and, if necessary, treatment all at once, lifts some of the burden. Having been through this myself, I want to do all I can to make it easier for other ladies in the same situation."
Jasper Gill, Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon at Musgrove Park Hospital commented: "I welcome the launch of Osna Fund to raise funds for this ‘state of the art’ machine, which will help so many ladies in Somerset diagnosed with breast cancer."
Further details of the event can be found on the Osna Fund Facebook page http://facebook.com/OSNAFund or via the link on their website http://www.osnafund.com – the party starts at 7.30pm.
