"I picked the right people. They brought me through a very difficult time.”
Just before Christmas in 2017, Sarah Bass Aspe felt something unusual on her left side while in the shower. Careful not to ruin her grandson’s first Christmas, she kept her suspicions to herself and scheduled an appointment with her gynecologist for after the new year. Her doctor referred her to the Breast Center at the Barnabas Health Ambulatory Care Center for a mammogram and biopsy and the results confirmed her suspicions, she had breast cancer.
“I went back to my gynecologist and he gave me a bunch of business cards and said, ‘you have to pick three professionals,’” Sarah recalls. “I went through the cards and I picked a surgeon, medical oncologist and radiation oncologist. And I tell you what, God must have been looking down at me. I picked the right people. They brought me through a very difficult time.”
Going through treatment was not an easy task for Sarah. She often felt unwell after chemotherapy treatments and uncomfortable during radiation. Her mom was her rock, she went with Sarah to every single appointment: surgery, chemo, radiation. “She was a real trooper. That made a big difference,” says Sarah.
As an artist, Sarah pushed through using her artwork as a way of coping. “My artwork is a very important aspect that I found therapeutic because, in a way, your hands have eyes. Sometimes you think you can't paint it or you can't draw it, but you have some kind of energy that can go through you and you can create some beautiful things. That helped quite a bit,” she says.
This journey finally gave Sarah a chance to focus on herself instead of taking care of everyone else around her. Her advice to others going through a similar experience, “You just have to hang in there. There may be a rainbow at that end.”