The
Bridge House
Plymouth, NH
T's Story
Last summer a 29 year-old woman, six feet tall, rail thin with a mane of dark brown hair and big dark eyes arrived at our shelter with her three children. Raised in Barnstead she left high school to move to New York where her second and third child was born. She set up housekeeping with the children’s father and honed her parenting skills. A stay at home mom she acquired her GED on line in her early twenties. Last year at twenty-eight she was diagnosed with a rare salivary gland cancer and underwent a radical resection of her left face and neck. That procedure was followed by extensive chemotherapy and radiation.
She returned to NH as a single mom and tried living at her mother’s. However the house couldn’t accommodate four extra people “camping out” so with her mother’s support she moved into The Bridge House Shelter, gastrostomy tube and all. Once here, after some head butting with our BH case manager who firmly believes everyone does better after getting a job, she created a plan of action that led to full-time employment at Rite-Aid. She enrolled her children in Daycare/Head start, Head start/Kindergarten and third grade.
She excelled in the parenting department was willing to try her hand as a mentor/model for another mom facing numerous parenting challenges with her three. She also took to heart the smoke cessation options offered at the Bridge House and was the first participant to actually quit! A talented artist she designed and executed a wishing well display for a non-profit advertising at Rite-Aid.
Her oldest daughter, a nine-year old miniature of herself, joined dance class through a scholarship at Ninth-state and this courageous mom got on a waiting list for an apartment. She’ll get a car from Good News Garage next week. This week she moved into her apartment. Last week she learned the cancer has metastasized to her lung with a vengeance and she now faces radiation and chemo. She texted (is that a word?) me from work with her path result. I texted back “it’s a good thing you’re tough. If there’s anyone who can beat this it’s you.”
Other Comments:
It was a good story before the recurrence. Now I think telling it might give her hope. We don’t know what will happen in the next few months as treatment progresses. Will she lose her job (lose her hair), lose her apartment, and move back to the BH?
I said ”tell it now and next year when this is all behind you can contact Giving Matters and say ‘I did it. I made it. I’m going to be OK’ ”
UPDATE:
This account was submitted to NPR’s “Giving Matters “ last spring and was selected for broadcast. Since that time DHMC has pronounced there is nothing more to be done. ‘T’ has become disabled and is now receiving hospice care. However, in October while she still had some energy, local groups …First Star, Keeping Memories of You and Me Alive, Plymouth Travel and six anonymous guardian angels sent the family, now reunited with the children’s father, to Disney World.
The battle has become much tougher since then but SMH physicians and Kelley White MD Mid-State pediatrician and the Plymouth Elementary School staff has been enormously supportive. The Bridge House continuous to be available to the entire family at a moments notice.
Right now T just wants to make it through Christmas but her nine-year old says …I’m going to be ten in February and mom says every mother needs to see her daughter turn double digits…Does the Bridge House believe in miracles? Yes, we do.
(Last week NPR’s ‘Giving Matters’ interviewed T’s mother Vickie Ellis about the Bridge House)
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