inPERSON
Don’t Stop
Living
Coraopolis’ Joyce Gass
Encourages Fellow
Breast Cancer Survivors
to Take it Day by Day
BY Jennifer Brozak
I
n the spring of 1991, Coraopolis resident
Joyce Gass was enjoying life as a 34-yearold wife and mother of two young boys.
She was working as a medical assistant for a
physician’s office, and found herself coming
home more tired than usual. Like most
parents, however, she chalked that up to the
challenges of raising a family while working
full-time.
Then, while taking a shower one day
that spring, she found a lump during a
breast self-exam. Alarmed, Joyce scheduled
an appointment with her physician, who
conducted a mammogram in his office. He
found nothing suspicious, and a relieved
Joyce was sent on her way. Heeding
to her intuition, however, and at the
recommendation of one of the physicians
she worked for, she visited another doctor,
10 724.942.0940 to advertise | Moon Township
who attempted to drain the lump. A week
later, at her follow-up appointment, she
learned that it had doubled in size.
Shortly after this finding, she underwent
surgery to remove the lump. Two days later,
Joyce was at a follow-up visit to have her
dressings changed. She had her youngest
son with her at the doctor’s office when she
received what the doctor claimed was “good
news and bad news.”
“He said that the lump was negative, but
that my lymph nodes had tested positive for
breast cancer,” she said. “I just sat there in
shock.”
With no other history of breast cancer
in her family, Joyce’s mother had just been
diagnosed with breast cancer the previous
spring, and now she sat in stunned silence,
reeling from the same diagnosis.
Overcome with grief, she called her
husband Terry at his office to share the
heartbreaking news. Not knowing he was
in a meeting in his office – and that she was
on speakerphone – she sobbed to him and
to everyone else in the room, “I have breast
cancer.”
“Things were very different back then,”
Joyce said. “People didn’t talk about their
experiences with breast cancer like they
do now. It was kept quiet. So that was
embarrassing.”
Despite the grief and fear, she knew that
she had to beat the disease. “I thought, I
have two boys to raise. I want to see them
graduate. I want to be a grandma,” she said.
Her older son at a Kennywood picnic,
she had promised 8-year-old Steve a
meal at Chuck E. Cheese’s following her