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A Cup of Comfort.
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A Cup of Comfort
A Cup of Comfort for
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The following story is excerpted from:
A Cup of Comfort
Stories that warm your heart, lift your
spirit and enrich your life
The Lady in the Blue Dress
Bridget's fingers brushed against the lump in her left breast as she showered. Her hand flew from her breast as if burned; her heart raced. Though the water was hot and the bathroom steamy, she suddenly felt chilled.
"You're a nurse," she chided herself, her voice reverberating against the tiled walls. "Pick up your hand and feel that breast again."
Bridget O'Shea closed her eyes and fearfully reached across her chest. She slowly slid her hand down from below the neck to the soft rise above her left nipple. Once again she felt the marble-like hardness beneath the skin. "Oh, please, God, no!"
Fighting panic, she hastily stepped out of the tub. "It feels like a pea," she said to the empty room. "It feels just like it says in the breast-cancer pamphlets! Oh, Mother of God, help me!"
Bridget slipped on her yellow terry-cloth robe and leaned close to the mirror, staring at her breast as she kneaded it, trying to see the lump. Water from her hair dropped down her face; when she tried to brush away the drops, she realized they were tears.
She considered calling her sister Maureen, but thought better of it. As the oldest of seven children in a household that had been dominated by an alcoholic father and with an exhausted mother, Bridget was the one her siblings always relied on. She would deal with this alone.
Bridget tried to collect herself by envisioning her mother. When she hadn't been too busy doing laundry, getting food on the table, or trying to avoid her father's violent outbursts when he'd been drinking, her mother had been Bridget's one source of comfort growing up. She imagined her mother making a steaming "cuppa" tea, saying, "Bridget, don't waste a good worry; see how things turn out before we go ruinin' a perfectly good day." She wished her mother were there now.
Bridget shuddered, remembering the day her mother found a lump in her own breast, too late to do anything about it. The cancer had already spread and killed her in less than six months.
With trembling fingers, Bridge dialed Dr. Sheldon's number. She had been his nurse when her daughter, Molly, was in pre-school, just after she and her husband divorced. Now, 20 years later, she still used him as her gynecologist.
The receptionist wasted no time when she heard Bridget's frightened voice. "I'll push you to the top of this afternoon's appointments. Try not to imagine the worst. Some of these lumps turn out to be cysts."
Bridget knew this was true, but she also knew cancer ran in her family—not only her mother had it, but two aunts as well. Aunt Theresa had succumbed to cervical cancer following a hysterectomy at age 40, and Aunt Alice had died of lung cancer after 26 years of smoking two and a half packs of filterless cigarettes a day.
Preoccupied with her dark thoughts, Bridget dressed. As she brushed her thick blonde hair, another image of her mother, coaxing her to "put a little something in your belly," came to mind. When she opened the refrigerator, she gagged at the sight of the food and broke into a cold sweat.
As she sat in the waiting room of the doctor's office, Bridget leafed through a magazine. The cover showed a beautiful young woman with her strong chin raised confidently with the headline "Be Prepared for Life's Surprises." Her heart sank at the irony.
The nurse made small talk to put her at ease while Bridget slipped on a short blue patient's robe that was open in front, exposing her vulnerable breasts. She remembered sitting with her mother in this same room, waiting for the results of her mammogram. While Bridget paced, her mother sat quietly. "Bridget, don't fidget," she finally said, and they both laughed at the absurdity of the rhyme. Today, there was no one to laugh, or cry, with.
Dr. Sheldon rapped softly on the door of the examining room before walking in. "Bridget, my friend, what's this I hear about a lump?" His kind eyes peered over the top of his half-glasses.
"I felt it in the shower this morning, on my left breast."
The doctor palpated the left breast with his fingers, and then thoroughly examined both her breasts, the area beneath the collarbone, and under her arms. During the examination, Bridget turned her head away, fixing her gaze on a poster stressing the importance of a woman's nutrition during pregnancy.
When she was pregnant with Molly, her mother had made her gallons of potato leek soup. It was the only thing she could keep down the first three months. Bridget's marriage was already shaky at that time, and she had fretted to her mother about her concern over the added strain the baby would bring. Her mother had refused to let her even think of such a thing.
"This blessed baby has been given to you for a reason, Bridget. At the time, we don't always understand why things are happening, but when we look back, we know it was providence."
Mom had been right, Bridget thought. What would I ever do without my beautiful Molly? She shivered. What will Molly do without me?
"Okay, you can sit up now." Dr. Sheldon put his hand under her elbow and helped her to a sitting position.
Bridget looked directly into the doctor's face. "Did you feel it?"
"Something is there, all right. The next step is a mammogram. But first, while you're here, I'd like to aspirate this nodule."
She knew the aspiration would tell him whether the pebble in her breast was a lump or just a cyst. The doctor performed the procedure quickly and confirmed her fears.
"The lump is firm and feels attached to the surrounding tissue, and I was unable to aspirate fluid from the nodule, so we know it's not a cyst. You know that that means it might be malignant. Then there's your mother's history to consider."
Dr. Sheldon took Bridget's hands in his and shook his head. "There is no easy way to get through this, Bridget, but it's important to move quickly. Let's schedule a mammogram for this afternoon. Dr. Brunner will read your X-rays and call me immediately. I wish I were telling you a different story."
"Tell another story, Ma," Bridget's brothers and sisters would beg their mother after dinner. They loved hearing about leprechauns in the old country. Her mother always winked at Bridget when the stories were over. "A little make-believe never hurt anyone."
Not this time, Ma. We can't afford to make believe. An hour later, Bridget had the mammogram.
Dr. Sheldon called shortly after she returned home. "It's what we suspected. Let's get a biopsy as soon as possible."
Bridget knew that if cancerous or suspect cells were found during the biopsy, the doctor was likely to remove not only the lump but also her breast; if it had spread, he would also have to remove her lymph nodes and possibly more tissue.
"How soon?" Bridget asked. "The longer I have to wait, the more of a wreck I'll be."
"How about the day after tomorrow?" Before Bridget had a chance to complain, Dr. Sheldon continued. "It'll give you a chance to get things in order, tell Molly, take care of what you need to."
"Tell Molly? It's my job to worry about her, not the other way around," Bridget joked.
That night after a half-hearted attempt to force down a small supper, Bridget called her daughter. When Molly answered the phone, her usually exuberant voice was a little wary. "Hey, Mom, it's Tuesday, not Sunday. What's the occasion?"
"Can't a mother speak to her daughter any day of the week?" Bridget sassed. She wanted to sound upbeat and optimistic, but there was no sense beating around the bush.
Molly reacted swiftly. "I'll be there in a few hours."
"Molly, it's too dangerous to drive a hundred miles late at night after hearing unpleasant news. Besides, don't you have to clear it with your boss to get time off?"
"Let me worry about that. I want to be with you for the biopsy. Keep the porch light on." Molly said. "Mom . . . I love you. Kisses over the phone."
Bridget let go of the tears she'd fought all day. Kisses over the phone—just like Ma used to say whenever we called her. Kisses over the phone, indeed, Bridget sniffled.
The next morning Bridget was admitted to the hospital. She went through the routine preoperative tests and spent the rest of the day waiting. Molly, bless her soul, kept her company the whole time. An aide brought in Bridget's dinner tray. Molly picked up the lid and drew back.
"Whew! You'd have to be really sick to eat this!" Bridget laughed and pushed away the tray.
"Save the Jell-O, though, Molly. They can't do too much to ruin Jell-O. Maybe I'll feel like eating it later." Bridget reached up to pat her daughter's cheek. "In the meantime, toots, I'm feeling pretty tired. Everything is catching up with me, I guess."
Molly leaned over and hugged her tightly. "We'll get through this, Mom. Don't worry. We're a tough team." Bridget held onto her daughter and kissed her one last time before saying goodbye.
On the way out, Molly stopped to chat with Bridget's roommate, a young woman who'd had a tumor removed from her kidney the day before. "Keep an eye on my mother, would you?" Molly winked. "Don't let her try to sneak out of here without paying her bill."
Bridget and her roommate laughed and shooed Molly out of the room. Although exhausted, Bridget couldn't turn off her mind. She tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
Finally, she closed her eyes for a few seconds. When her lids fluttered open, she thought she saw her mother standing next to her bed. Funny, she was wearing the beautiful blue lace dress she'd worn to all the family weddings, the one she'd loved so much and had asked to be buried in. Bridget felt her mother's hand smooth a stray lock of hair behind her ear and whisper, "Bridget, my girl, I don't want you to go through what I did." She felt her mother's lips brush her cheek. She snuggled deeper under the thin blanket and fell into a sound sleep.
Bridget woke the next morning in the recovery room and, still groggy, reached over to feel for her left breast. It was still there. Thank God! The lump was benign. Oh, God! Was it too far gone? Had Dr. Sheldon taken one look, decided her fate, and just closed her up? Relief quickly gave way to panic. She called for the nurse.
There was a flurry of activity around her, and Dr. Sheldon strode in, a concerned look on this face.
"Bridget," he began haltingly. "I don't know what to say. . . . It's the strangest thing. . . . We went in to remove the nodule, but nothing was there. I looked at the mammogram to make sure I wasn't operating on the wrong breast, but there it was clear as day on the film."
He took a deep breath. "But there is no sign of tumor—nothing at all—in your breast tissue. It was as if we had the wrong patient on the table."
Bridget felt her breast, looking for the lump. She found nothing.
"Where did it go? Could there be some sort of mistake? Has this ever happened before?" she riddled him with questions.
Dr. Sheldon raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "I have no answers. I really don't know how to explain it. The nurses in the operating room, the interns, the anesthesiologist—all of us, we couldn't believe it. We'll do another mammogram, but for now, let's be glad for a minor miracle."
Meanwhile, Molly walked into Bridget's room holding a bouquet of daffodils. Seeing the empty bed, she turned to her mother's roommate. "Not back from surgery yet?"
"No," the young woman answered. "But don't worry. I stayed in recovery a long while, too. Sometimes they're short-staffed and can't find anyone to wheel you back right away."
"I'll wait. I want to be here when she comes back." Molly rested the flowers on the window ledge. "By the way, did my mom have any company today?" Even though her parents were divorced, Molly had called her dad and was hoping he'd stop by.
The roommate propped herself up on one elbow, thinking carefully. "No, no one stopped by today. But your mom did have a visitor last night after you left. I don't know who she was, but she was wearing the most beautiful blue lace dress."
—Edie Scher