Page 328 - She's One Crazy Lady!

Knowing we h“
already increased
our donation he
asked if there was
any possibility
of increasing
it again – to
£100,000 to
build a unique
café and seating
area?
”
to an empty corner... ‘That really needs a café doesn’t it?’ he said. Ah! The penny had dropped. Knowing we had already increased our donation he asked if there was any possibility of increasing it again – to £100,000 to build a unique café and seating area?
This was big money! I had to tell him this would need to be discussed with our Trustees. To cut a long story short, we agreed as we had the reserves and wanted to do a good job at KGH after five years of fundraising. We paid for the café, much of the commissioned art work in different areas of the Centre, curtains and bright coloured tiles around the sinks in the Consultation Rooms and various other bits and pieces. Like our first presentation, the passing over of £100k was enormous.
In addition to those already mentioned we went on to fund many more projects in the Centre, in the Breast Clinic and in the Breast Screening department... (special thanks to Sue Collins who managed the Breast Screening Department and regularly organised fundraising events with the staff – even getting her grandson to produce a CD for us!)
To continue the list – Surgical Gamma Probes; Surgical Retractors; an Ultrasound Machine; Breast Screening equipment, Mammography chairs; a ‘fat-filler’; help with fitting out eight single-bedded rooms; Quiet Room chairs and chairs for the Breast Screening Waiting areas; televisions; DVD players... how sad it is now that the Crazy Hats Café is no longer – a victim of the Covid Pandemic and ‘Progress’! Please keep reading the papers to see how our final donation (presented in November 2021) of £390,000 is being used!!
At Northampton General Hospital we tried to give similar amounts and worked very closely with the Breast Screening Department and the Oncology Unit (both very supportive of Crazy Hats in selling our merchandise and personally supporting our events.)
Support started there with decorating one of their rooms to make into a Quiet Room, then on to fund the refurbishment of the Talbot Butler Ward; the staff room, carpeting the Chemotherapy Suite and providing new chairs; overhauling one of the Breast Screening Mobile Vans; buying numerous items of innovative surgical equipment; building a Crazy Hats Coffee Bar in the Oncology Department (still there but closed since Covid... why?); funding a ‘sluice room’; funding a dishwasher; providing funding for their nipple tattooing service; chairs for ladies to have mammograms more comfortably; literature for patients with learning difficulties; patient entertainment equipment; providing bras for newly-diagnosed ladies and a computerised patient information system – that sadly never materialised (not of our making).
One thing that we loved to do for both hospitals was to decorate patient areas at Christmas time with beautiful colour-coordinated large Christmas trees – until such time as Infection Control announced it was not possible to continue with. As said – progress is not always good!
(Support for the LRI has been covered under the chapter: ‘My Party Piece’.)
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