When Holly Shivers found the lump in her breast in August, she didn't waste any time; her sister had battled breast cancer. So Shivers went to see her doctor the next day, and had the lump surgically removed at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital on Sept. 24.

Then she waited for the results of the biopsy. Anxiously. It was supposed to take a week.

But instead of receiving a report that would tell her if she had cancer or was in the clear, the 41-year-old Miller Place mother received a call from her surgeon, who said the specimen never arrived at the laboratory. It had been lost somewhere between the operating suite and the pathology lab - along with the critical information encrypted within. And, though she talked to other experts, she has no other way to find out if the mass was malignant.

"A week is a long time to wait for results to come back. Now it's 10 years," Shivers said, referring to the time that may pass before she knows she is cancer-free. Breaking up in tears, she said, "You look at your children, you tell them you're fine - but you really don't know."

"They threw my future in the trash pail."

Shivers is considering filing a lawsuit against the hospital, but, her lawyer has warned, she is racing the clock. Legislation headed for the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today would cap non-economic compensation awards at $250,000 for the kind of mental anguish she said she is suffering.

A spokeswoman for Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson declined to comment on the case, citing patient confidentiality, and surgeon Randall Schrager did not return phone calls.

Shivers said she has trouble sleeping at night and cannot plan for the future. She worries incessantly that she may have a cancer spreading untreated inside her, and that her teenage girls may have to grow up without her. Yet she is one of an untold number of patients whose rights to recover damages would be severely limited if the bill is passed, said her attorney, Michael Duffy of Uniondale.

The bill does not cap compensation for out-of-pocket costs such as medical care costs or lost wages. But the proposed non-economic limits would apply to severe injuries, such as the loss of a limb and even the death of a child. The bill is supported by the American Medical Association, whose officials say high malpractice awards are driving up their liability insurance premiums.

But Duffy said people like Shivers are those who are going to suffer. Duffy said he is convinced the hospital lost the specimen because the note in Shivers' medical record signed by pathologist John C. Chumas says: "The specimen is labeled 'left breast mass.' Received is a specimen container with 50 cc of formalin; no specimen is identified in container."

"Here is a woman who for 10 years is not going to know, and by the time she does know, it'll be too late," Duffy said. "This is exactly the case that the bill targets.

"Others who will be affected include families who lost a child, elderly parent or homemaker to medical malpractice, lawyers say. In those cases, there usually are minimal, if any, economic damages.

In the case of another family he represents, Duffy said, the parents lost their 6-year-old child when she suffered a severe allergic reaction to milk; although the parents knew she was allergic, their physician never gave her a prescription for a life-saving epinephrine syringe that can save the lives of patients who go into anaphylactic shock due to an acute allergic reaction.

Physicians who support the bill capping awards say rising jury verdict awards are pushing up insurance premiums and threaten to put doctors out of business.

"If my child died, there's no way I could put a monetary amount on that," said Molly Williams, an official of the Medical Society of the State of New York, a professional association. " ... But if we keep going down the road we're going, we're going to lose services and access to medical care."

Shivers, who said she never expected to find herself in a lawyer's office, said she is appalled by the proposed legislation.

"A million dollars won't save my life. To me it's not about money," she said. "But someone has to be held accountable."

And it would help my husband raise my kids without their mother. You can't put a dollar cap on that."