Monique Bass, 53, had always been proactive about her health. A single mother of twin sons and grandmother of four, she started getting annual mammograms at 40. But it was a self-exam at 47 while lying in bed one night that changed everything. She found a lump that didn’t feel right.
What followed were three tissue biopsies of the lump over three years, each coming back benign. Doctors wanted to keep monitoring. Bass pushed back. The lump was growing, and she knew her body well enough to realize something was wrong. She insisted they remove the lump (a procedure called a lumpectomy) and test it. The diagnosis: stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma that was aggressive enough to require immediate chemotherapy.
Bass got the call while sitting in a car wash. “I felt like I was in The Twilight Zone,” she says. “Not in a million years did I think I would ever hear the words, ‘You have cancer.’” The timing made everything harder. It was 2020, the height of the pandemic, so she navigated much of her journey alone. Adding “another emotional layer,” she was also going through a divorce. Treatment included four rounds of doxorubicin, four rounds of paclitaxel, and 21 radiation treatments. Losing her hair hit the hardest. “But the silver lining is that it grew back even more beautifully after treatment,” Bass says.
Throughout it all her faith anchored her. “I’m not a deeply religious person, but I believe in God, and I knew he had me in the palm of his hand,” Bass says. On the other side of treatment, she founded What’s Behind the Bra?, a New Jersey nonprofit that distributes comfort care packages to breast cancer patients year-round, and hosts a weekly podcast of the same name every Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET.
2. “I surrounded myself with love and laughter.”
Jaqueline Beale, 64, comes from a family with a long history of cancer, including her mother, who had breast cancer. That’s why it wasn’t a huge surprise when, at 40, she found a lump during a breast self-exam. Even though a sonogram and mammogram came back clear, it was obvious that something wasn’t right, so Beale got a biopsy.
When the radiologist called with her result—stage 1 breast cancer, which means the cancer hadn’t spread beyond where the abnormal cells had developed—she could hear a lot of noise in the background. He said, “I’m in New York trying to hail a cab, but you have breast cancer. You need to find a breast surgeon.” Despite the bluntness Beale says she couldn’t help but find the humor in the situation, which is something she carried with her through treatment.
