WHAT a blessed era in the world's history that was when the ladies
had no nerves! Alas! I was born too late instead of too early, as
the complaint of some is. I am cursed with nerves, and, as a
consequence, am ever and anon distressed with nervous fears of some
direful calamity or painful affliction. I am a simpleton for this, I
know; but then, how can I help it? I try to be a woman of sense, but
my nerves are too delicately strung. Reason is not sufficient to
subdue the fears of impending evil that too often haunt me.
It would not be so bad with me, if I did not find so many good souls
ready to add fuel to the flames of my fears. One of my most horrible
apprehensions, since I have been old enough to think about it, has
been of that dreadful disease, cancer. I am sure I shall die of
it,--or, if not, some time in life have to endure a frightful
operation for its removal.
I have had a dull, and sometimes an acute pain in one of my breasts,
for some years. I am sure it is a cancer forming, though my husband
always ridicules my fears. A few days ago a lady called in to see
me. The pain had been troubling me, and I felt nervous and
depressed.
"You don't look well," said my visitor.
"I am not very well," I replied.
"Nothing serious, I hope?"
"I am afraid there is, Mrs. A--" I looked gloomy, I suppose, for I
felt so.
"You really alarm me. What can be the matter?"
"I don't know that I have ever mentioned it to you, but I have, for
a long time, had a pain in my left breast, where I once had a
gathering, and in which hard lumps have ever since remained. These
have increased in size, of late, and I am now confirmed in my fears
that a cancer is forming."
"Bless me!" And my visitor lifted both hands and eyes. "What kind of
a pain is it?"
"A dull, aching pain, with occasional stitches running out from one
spot, as if roots were forming."
"Just the very kind of pain that Mrs. N--had for some months
before the doctors pronounced her affection cancer. You know Mrs.
N--?"
"Not personally. I have heard of her."
"You know she had one of her breasts taken off?"
"Had she?" I asked, in a husky voice. I had horrible feelings.
"Oh, yes!" My visitor spoke with animation.
"She had an operation performed about six months ago. It was
dreadful! Poor soul!"
My blood fairly curdled; but my visitor did not notice the effect of
her words.
"How long did the operation last?" I ventured to inquire.
"Half an hour."
"Half an hour! So long?"
"Yes; it was a full half hour from the time the first incision was
made until the last little artery was taken up."
"Horrible! horrible!" I ejaculated, closing my eyes, and shuddering.
"If so horrible to think of, what must it be in reality?" said my
thoughtless visitor. "If it were my case, I would prefer death. But
Mrs. N--is not an ordinary woman. She possesses unusual fortitude,
and would brave any thing for the sake of her husband and children.
It took even her, however, a long time to make up her mind to have
the operation performed; and it was only when she was satisfied that
further delay would endanger her life, that she consented to have it
done. I saw her just the day before; she looked exceedingly pale,
and said but little. A very intimate friend was with her, whom I was
surprised to hear talk to her in the liveliest manner, upon subjects
of the most ordinary interest. She was relating a very amusing story
which she had read; when I entered, and was laughing at the
incidents. Even Mrs. N--smiled. It seemed to me very much out of
place, and really a mockery to the poor creature; it was downright
cruel. How any one could do so I cannot imagine. 'My dear madam,' I
said as soon as I could get a chance to speak to her, 'how do you
feel? I am grieved to death at the dreadful operation you will have
to go through. But you must bear it bravely; it will soon be over.'
She thanked me with tears in her eyes for my kind sympathies, and
said that she hoped she would be sustained through the severe trial.
Before I could get a chance to reply, her friend broke in with some
nonsensical stuff that made poor Mrs. N--laugh in spite of
herself, even though the tears were glistening on her eyelashes. I
felt really shocked. And then she ran on in the wildest strain you
ever heard, turning even the most serious remark I could make into
fun. And, would you believe it? she treated with levity the
operation itself whenever I alluded to it, and said that it was
nothing to fear--a little smarting and a little pain, but not so bad
as a bad toothache, she would wager a dollar.
"'That is all very well for you to say,' I replied, my feelings of
indignation almost boiling over, 'but if you had the operation to
bear, you would find it a good deal worse than a bad toothache, or
the severest pain you ever suffered in your life.'
"Even this was turned into sport. I never saw such a woman. I
believe she would have laughed in a cholera hospital. I left,
assuring Mrs. N--of my deepest sympathies, and urged her to nerve
herself for the sad trial to which she was so soon to be subjected.
I was not present when the operation was performed, but one who
attended all through the fearful scene gave me a minute description
of every thing that occurred."
The thought of hearing the details of a dreadful operation made me
sick at heart, and yet I felt a morbid desire to know all about it.
I could not ask my visitor to pause; and yet I dreaded to hear her
utter another sentence. Such was the strange disorder of my
feelings! But it mattered not what process of thought was going on
in my mind, or what was the state of my feelings; my visitor went
steadily on with her story, while every fifth word added a beat to
my pulse per minute.
The effect of this detail was to increase all the cancerous symptoms
in my breast, or to cause me to imagine that they were increased.
When my husband came home, I was in a sad state of nervous
excitement. He anxiously inquired the cause.
"My breast feels much worse than it has felt for a long time," said
I. "I am sure a cancer is forming. I have all the symptoms."
"Do you know the symptoms?" he asked.
"Mrs. N--had a cancer in her breast, and my symptoms all resemble
hers."
"How do you know?"
"Mrs. A--has been here, and she is quite intimate with Mrs. N--.
All my symptoms, she says, are precisely like hers."
"I wish Mrs. A--was in the deserts of Arabia!" said my husband, in
a passion. "Even if what she said were true, what business had she
to say it? Harm, not good, could come of it. But I don't believe you
have any more cancer in your breast than I have. There is an
obstruction and hardening of the glands, and that is about all."
"But Mrs. N--'s breast was just like mine, for Mrs. A--says so.
She described the feeling Mrs. N--had, and mine is precisely like
it."
"Mrs. A--neither felt the peculiar sensation in Mrs. N--'s breast
nor in yours; and, therefore, cannot know that they are alike. She
is an idle, croaking gossip, and I wish she would never cross our
threshold. She always does harm."
I felt that she had done me harm, but I wouldn't say so. I was a
good deal vexed at the way my husband treated the matter, and
accused him of indifference as to whether I had a cancer or not. He
bore the accusation very patiently, as, indeed, he always does any
of my sudden ebullitions of feeling. He knows my weakness.
"If I thought there were danger," he mildly said, "I would be as
much troubled as you are."
"As to danger, that is imminent enough," I returned, fretfully.
"On the contrary, I am satisfied that there is none. One of your
symptoms makes this perfectly clear."
"Indeed! What symptom?" I eagerly asked.
"Your terrible fears of a cancer are an almost certain sign that you
will never have one. The evil we most fear, rarely, if ever, falls
upon us."
"That is a very strange way to talk," I replied.
"But a true way, nevertheless," said my husband.
"I can see no reason in it. Why should we be troubled to death about
a thing that is never going to happen?"
"The trouble is bad enough, without the reality, I suppose. We are
all doomed to have a certain amount of anxiety and trouble here,
whether real or imaginary. Some have the reality, and others the
imagination. Either is bad enough; I don't know which is worse."
"I shall certainly be content to have the imaginary part," I
replied.
"That part you certainly have, and your full share of it. I believe
you have, at some period or other, suffered every ill that flesh is
heir to. As for me, I would rather have a good hearty fit of
sickness, a broken leg or arm, or even a cancer, and be done with
it, than become a living Pandora's box, even in imagination."
"As you think I am?"
"As I know you are."
"Then you would really like to see me have a cancer in my breast,
and be done with it?" I said this pretty sharply.
"Don't look so fiercely at me," returned my husband, smiling. "I
didn't say I would rather you would have a cancer; I said I would
rather have one, and be done with it, than suffer as you do from the
fear of it, and a hundred other evils."
"I must say you are quite complimentary to your wife," I returned,
in a little better humour than I had yet spoken. The fact was, my
mind took hold of what my husband said about real and imaginary
evils, and was somewhat braced up. Of imaginary evils I had
certainly had enough to entitle me to a whole lifetime exemption
from real ones.
From the time Mrs. A--left me until my husband came in, the pain
in my breast had steadily increased, accompanied by a burning and
stinging sensation. In imagination, I could clearly feel the entire
cancerous nucleus, and perceive the roots eating their way in all
directions around it. This feeling, when I now directed my thoughts
to my breast, was gone--very little pain remained.
After tea, my husband went out and returned in about an hour. He
said he had been round to consult with our physician, who assured
him that he had seen hundreds of cases like mine, not one of which
terminated in cancer; that such glandular obstructions were common,
and might, under certain circumstances, unless great care were used,
cause inflammation and suppuration; but were no more productive of
cancer, a very rare disease, and consequent upon hereditary
tendencies, than were any of the glandular obstructions or
gatherings in other parts of the body.
"But the breast is so tender a place," I said.
"And yet," returned my husband, "the annals of surgery show ten
cancers in other parts of the body to one in the breast."
In this way my husband dissipated my fears, and restored my mind to
a comparatively healthy state. This, however, did not long remain; I
was attacked on the next day with a dull, deeply-seated pain in one
of my jaw-teeth. At first, I did not regard it much, but its longer
continuance than usual began to excite my fears, especially as the
tooth was, to all appearance, sound.
While suffering from this attack, I had a visit from another friend
of the same class with Mrs. A--. She was a kind, good-natured
soul, and would watch by your sick-bed untiringly, night after
night, and do it with real pleasure. But she had, like Mrs. A--, a
very thoughtless habit of relating the many direful afflictions and
scenes of human suffering it had been her lot to witness and hear
of, unconscious that she often did great harm thereby, particularly
when these things were done, as was too often the case, _apropos_.
"You are not well," she said, when she came in and saw the
expression of pain in my face.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing more than a very troublesome tooth-ache," I replied.
"Use a little kreosote," said she.
"I would; but the tooth is sound."
"A sound tooth, is it?" My visitor's tone and look made my heart
beat quicker.
"Yes, it is perfectly sound."
"I am always afraid of an aching tooth that is perfectly sound,
since poor Mrs. P--had such a time with her jaw."
"What was that?" I asked, feeling instantly alarmed.
"Which tooth is it that aches?" my friend asked.