The second portable ultrasound for the Surgical Assessment Unit was first asked for in the autumn of 2022. The lead consultant on SAU at the time, who had moved across from Taunton the previous spring, sat down with the chair of trustees over coffee in the Friends’ Café and explained, with a pencilled diagram on a napkin, why one ultrasound machine for the unit was no longer enough. The unit was running at full capacity. The single existing machine was in use almost every hour of every day. A patient in the assessment cubicles at 03.00, who would otherwise be moved to radiology, would be assessed faster and more gently at the bedside. A cardiac probe — which the existing machine lacked — would mean the registrar could rule out tamponade in three minutes rather than thirty.
The trustees took the request to the August 2023 board meeting and agreed it the same evening. We named the appeal in our annual report that autumn — ‘The Second Ultrasound’ — and built a small fundraising calendar around it: an Anniversary Supper in 2023 dedicated to the appeal, a Spring Walk and a Summer Fair in 2024 with the ultrasound at the centre of the literature, and a programme of small village events through 2025. The Yeovil Rotary Club ran two evening quizzes for us at the Westlands. The Norton-sub-Hamdon women’s institute baked through the autumn of 2024 and raised £2,210 from a single Saturday stall. A Sherborne couple, who had been seen at SAU in early 2024, wrote in the spring of 2025 with a cheque for £15,000 and a request that we name nothing — a request we have respected.
The thermometer in the café, mounted by Keith from the shop rota on a wet Wednesday in October 2023, reached £21,400 by Christmas, £48,000 by the time of the 2024 AGM, £73,500 by the Anniversary Supper in September 2025, and £89,000 by the second week of February. We told the trust on 21 February that the appeal would close at month-end. By the time it did, we had £92,140.
What the £3,140 surplus will pay for
The trustees met on 3 March in the hospital boardroom to decide what to do with the small surplus. The unit’s lead nurse, who was at the meeting, asked if the money could be used for the software upgrade for the existing machine — a £2,800 item that had been on her list for some time. We agreed without discussion. The £340 balance has gone into the unit’s small comforts float for printed patient-information leaflets and a new examination-couch cover.
The new ultrasound itself is on order. The trust’s capital procurement office expects delivery in the second week of May. The trustees will be present for the formal handover and there will be a small ceremony on the unit — quiet, with a hot drink and a few biscuits, as our handovers always are. The machine will carry a Friends’ brass plaque for its first year. The plaque is engraved with the words ‘Funded by The League of Friends of the Yeovil Hospitals, Charity 220038, May 2026’.
We will never raise quickly. We will always raise for something the ward sister has already named. Roger Walkington · Chair’s closing remarks, 3 March 2026
The thank-you
Every donor to the appeal who left their address will receive a hand-signed letter in the post over the coming fortnight. The letter, on the cream-and-gold paper that we have used since 1985, was drafted by the chair and the honorary treasurer on the afternoon of 4 March and is being signed in batches by the trustees in the office. The chair has asked that no donor be thanked by email. If you donated and do not receive a letter by the end of March, please write to us at the Stoke-Sub-Hamdon office and we will send another.
To the Yeovil Rotary Club, the Norton-sub-Hamdon women’s institute, the Crewkerne quiz league, the Sherborne couple, the eleven anonymous donors who put cash directly in the trolley float, the families who gave in memory, the volunteers who collected at the Westlands, and the trust’s capital procurement office who turned a one-line PO around in three working days: thank you. We could not have done any of this without you, and we know it.
What is next
The trustees met on 3 March and agreed the priority for the coming year’s appeal — a piece of cardiology equipment that we are not yet ready to name. We will name it formally at the Anniversary Supper on 18 September 2026 and open the appeal the following Monday. The Spring Walk on 18 April 2026 will, this year, be raising unrestricted funds for the Equipment Appeal as a whole. Sign-up details are at /events/spring-walk-around-ham-hill.
In the meantime, the second portable ultrasound is on its way to Yeovil District Hospital. Quietly. In May. With a small ceremony, a hot drink, and a few biscuits.