Feb 20, 2008 8:38 pm US/Eastern
Cancer Patient Gets Married At Mass. Hospital
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
A Massachusetts General Hospital patient with advanced breast cancer married her longtime partner Wednesday at the hospital with loved ones and staff members by her side.
Camelia Rodriguez fulfilled a dream to be married in a white dress in a ceremony steeped in the traditions of her native Mexico.
She and longtime partner Jorge Estuardo got their wedding on Wednesday with the help of workers at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Rodriguez has spent the past two months with advanced breast cancer.
Three nurses brought the 53-year-old bride in a wheelchair to a family room on the hospital's 22nd floor. Stunning views of the city provided the backdrop to a wedding attended by family, friends, hospital workers and reporters.
"I feel so happy because a dream has come true," Rodriguez said.
Estuardo appeared emotional at times during the ceremony, in which he gave his bride the 13 gold coins traditional in Mexico to indicate his trust and confidence in her and that he will support her. The couple has been together for eight years.
"He wanted to make a special thing because this was her dream to be married to her partner," said nurse Amelia Barbosa.
A white rope in a figure eight shape was placed around the necks of the couple to symbolize a love which should bind them together, another Mexican tradition included in the ceremony performed in Spanish by Ricardo Valle, a pastor from Rodriguez's La Luce de Christo church in Chelsea.
"Now I ask the lord that he can send healing on myself, and I'm asking with all my heart, oh lord, to heal me," Rodriguez said.
Nurses and other hospital workers scrambled to organize the wedding in one day when Rodriguez said she felt well enough. The newlyweds have no plans to get away for a brief honeyoom because Rodriguez "is a little too sick to leave the hospital," MGH spokeswoman Emily Parker said.
A member of the hospital's radiology department volunteered her time to videotape the ceremony for Rodriguez's children in Mexico.
Workers at the department that provides foreign language interpreters worked to include the Mexican traditions, and the hospital's catering unit provided food, refreshments and a wedding cake, Parker said.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
