WENDOVER, Utah — Lucia Benitez didn’t have to take the day off of work Wednesday just to take care of herself, she said.
“Living out here in Wendover is tough when you need health care, especially if you're a female,” said Benitez. “You have to drive all the way to either Stansbury, or you'll go to the U, or you'll go to Salt Lake, wherever your doctor is, it's at least a two-hour round-trip drive. It's a great feeling to know that we're not forgotten, to know that there's somebody who cares and they're coming out here to take care of our community.”
For the first time ever, both Utah’s and Nevada’s mobile mammography vans were parked in the Montego Bay Casino parking lot to screen women for breast cancer.
“In this community, with half of it being on the Nevada side and the other half on the Utah side, there was always a part of our community that we were missing because the Utah women weren’t able to be seen on the Nevada side,” said Kerrie Preston, Practice Manager at Wendover Community Health Center.
Many Wendover women skip this yearly, potentially life-saving check, she said.
“Being as rural as we are, it's very hard,” said Preston. “Being at the age where I need a yearly screening.”
At Wednesday’s event, bilingual staff helped screen women who only speak Spanish.
“We see a lot of lower income, under-resourced patients, and we bend over backwards to make sure that if they we do find something on their mammogram, we get them right in for diagnostic treatment, and then they go into care from there,” said Lynette Phillips, Community Cancer Screening Manager for Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Huntsman is trying to educate women and fight stigmas around mammograms, she said.
“There's a lot of fear that it's going to hurt,” said Phillips. “It doesn't hurt. It's not comfortable, but it doesn't hurt.”
Benitez she tells every woman she knows to get one, she said.
“It's easy, and it can save your life.”
