Mercy Health Foundation Greater Cincinnati

Foundation support helps busy women like Erin get a mammogram

Erin Gratsch knows how important mobile mammography services are. They saved her life.

Gifts to the Foundation ensure life-saving mammo¬grams are available to women through¬out the region in similar situations: wives, mothers, caregivers, working women from all walks of life who are too busy to take time for themselves.

“As women, we take care of everybody else,” Erin says. “I didn’t have time to make an appointment to get a mammo¬gram. Then one Saturday I was shop¬ping for groceries and there was a mammovan in the parking lot. I knocked on the door and they took me in.”

A marathon runner, Erin was in great shape. She never expected the call she got a few days later: Her mammogram showed something concerning. After a few more tests, Erin was diagnosed with an early but aggressive cancer.

“That’s why these screenings are so very, very important,” she says. “I had no symptoms, no family history.”

That was six years ago. Today, she works as a coordinator for mobile mammography services at The Jewish Hospital — Mercy Health Women’s Center, helping other women who don’t take time for themselves to get life-saving breast cancer screenings. “I was one of these women,” she says. “Educating them and advocating for them is my passion.”

Erin, who is battling breast cancer a second time, is eternally grateful to the donors who make mobile mammography services available. “They are saving lives and these women truly are very grateful. If we weren’t here, they wouldn’t have their mammograms done.”