Ashley Saylor artwork

How a Young Mother Triumphed Over Aggressive Breast Cancer

Months after giving birth to her first child, Ashley Saylor was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. Her City of Hope care team and the power of art saw her through treatment challenges
Ashley Saylor and her son, Ethan
Ashley Saylor and her son, Ethan

At 35, life was pretty great for Ashley E.M. Saylor. She married a wonderful guy, they bought a home together in Claremont, California, and her art career was thriving. The next year, just before Christmas 2022, she got the best gift of all — a beautiful baby boy named Ethan.

Then came a series of shattering setbacks.

Right after she gave birth, she developed a serious heart condition called postpartum cardiomyopathy. It required a hospital stay that separated her from her son and later interfered with her ability to breastfeed him.

“That was really devastating,” she said. “Then a few months later, I found a lump in my breast.”

Her doctor sent her for imaging and a biopsy.

“I have the most vivid memory of walking into the biopsy appointment and seeing these images with two round blotches that were different from all the other tissue,” she recalled. “And I said to myself, ‘Wow, that person totally has cancer.’”

“That person” turned out to be her. But the tumors appeared to be small, and the nearest lymph node was deemed benign. It was only Stage 1.

Unfortunately, the biopsy also showed it was triple-negative breast cancer, which meant her tumor tested negative for estrogen, progesterone and the protein HER2. There are effective new treatments targeting those substances, but none for triple-negative disease, making it tougher to treat. It’s also the fastest growing and most aggressive type of breast cancer.

As serious as that was, she would soon learn it would not be the final diagnosis.

A  shock — but not a complete surprise

Several years earlier Saylor, whose mother had had breast and ovarian cancer, decided to get genetic testing and learned she had the BRCA1 mutation.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes that suppress tumors, and mutations can increase the likelihood of developing cancer. Saylor suspected her mother also had the mutation, which could explain her multiple bouts with cancer, and urged her whole family to get tested. Both her mother and brother were positive for BRCA1 — knowledge that makes a big difference in both screening and cancer treatment.

For example, the current recommended age for average-risk women to begin breast cancer screening is 40, but though Saylor was younger, the BRCA mutation made her eligible for annual mammograms as well as enhanced screenings with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

She had been diligent about MRI screenings, having them every six months, but stopped when she got pregnant, fearing that they might be harmful to the baby. According to the National Institutes of Health, however, MRIs are generally considered safe during pregnancy — and this lapse in screening probably kept her cancer from being detected sooner.

Surgery — then another disturbing discovery

Saylor consulted with City of Hope® surgeon Veronica Jones, M.D., chief of the Division of Breast Surgery in the Department of Surgery, and medical oncologist Joanne Mortimer, M.D., director of the Women's Cancers Program, co-leader of the breast cancer program and the Baum Family Professor in Women’s Cancers.

Veronica C. Jones, M.D., Breast Surgeon
Veronica Jones, M.D.

“In a situation with Stage 1 aggressive disease, upfront surgery is indicated. After a multidisciplinary discussion, the decision was made to remove the cancer with a lumpectomy, the quickest surgery we could schedule,” said Dr. Jones. “Once the cancer was treated, a double mastectomy was planned because of the BRCA mutation.”

When Dr. Jones removed the cancerous area and the sentinel lymph node, the final pathology report showed that the tumor was bigger than the imaging had indicated. It also found micrometastatic cancer in the lymph node.

The diagnosis was now Stage 3.

“I kind of freaked out a little bit,” Saylor said. “But Dr. Jones and Dr. Mortimer worked really closely together to plan something specifically for me. And if I'm able to tackle something with a plan, I'm OK.”

Next — chemotherapy, followed by a double mastectomy

“The purpose of the chemotherapy is to mop up microscopic metastatic disease — the cancer cells we can’t detect,” said Dr. Mortimer. “To find something on an X-ray, it would have to be at least a centimeter in size — and that’s 100 million cancer cells.”

Saylor’s son Ethan was about to turn 1, and she didn’t want chemotherapy to interfere with the joy of his first birthday celebration. But the day after, she began 22 weeks of treatment, consisting of carboplatin and Taxol and adriamycin and cytoxan.

Adriamycin is known as the “red devil” for its vivid color, which would play a role in the art Saylor created as she coped with cancer and the drug’s often debilitating side effects.

Joanne Mortimer
Joanne Mortimer, M.D.

“What made chemo so daunting was not being able to be the mom I wanted to be,” she said. “There’s so much sadness in missing the most important things you want to experience with your child.”

Each week, she would come home from chemotherapy covered with sweat, which meant she couldn’t pick up her son or even touch him because any bodily fluid could transfer the drugs to him.

“Ethan would be standing at the bottom of the stairs crying, and I couldn't do anything about it,” she said.

Once chemotherapy had been completed, Saylor underwent a double mastectomy. During the surgery, Dr. Jones took extreme care, sparing as much skin as possible for reconstruction, which was performed immediately afterward by plastic surgeon Jeff Chang, M.D., M.S.

She is currently undergoing radiation.

As a result of treatment, Saylor went into premature menopause, which can cause osteoporosis. So every six months for three years, she’ll receive Zometa, a bone medication that can also prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. And for a year, she’ll take a PARP inhibitor, a preventive treatment for patients with the BRCA1 mutation.

She is also considering further surgery to prevent ovarian cancer.

Supportive care — and the power of art

Ashley Saylor's artwork
Ashley Saylor's artwork

All through this ordeal, Saylor’s husband Drew provided the unwavering support she needed, but what she struggled most with was the pain of not being able to spend enough time with her son. Through the Department of Supportive Care Medicine, she had several sessions with a family counselor.

“She really helped ground me. She let me know that I was still a good mom and my son would be OK,” Saylor said.

In addition to counseling, the department offers many other services, including the Positive Image Center℠ to help patients deal with the way cancer and its treatment can affect their appearance, as well as support groups, yoga, meditation, massage and music and art therapy.

As an artist, Saylor has always understood the therapeutic value of art, and she created a powerful series of paintings during her cancer experience.

“I had to really go down into the depths of how ugly cancer is. And by painting it, it’s not in my soul anymore. It’s on that canvas,” she said.

She often drew directly from her imaging and pathology slides, as in a painting of a cancer cell that resembles a stained glass window, and another that shows cancer cells leaving a woman’s body on a spiraling pink ribbon.

“I love when patients put their emotions in drawings. It allows them to unleash their feelings and deal with what they’ve been going through,” said Dr. Mortimer. “Ashley even has humor in hers. I saw one about chemotherapy that has red devils in it. It’s very, very clever.”

The “Red Devil” painting will be completed in time for an upcoming show of Saylor’s work, titled “Reclaimed: Art and Life Beyond Cancer.” It will run from the opening reception on Oct. 12 to Nov. 9 at The Arts Area Gallery @ CASA Pitzer in Ontario.

Saylor is unequivocal in her appreciation of the care she got at City of Hope.

“Every person I've met there has a beautiful heart. It’s a whole level of caring that you don't find at other places,” she said.

The feeling is mutual.

“She's a wonderful person, and I love having her as a patient,” said Dr. Jones. “It's been great to see her walk through this experience so victoriously.”


Main image: One of Saylor's paintings. 

The Department of Supportive Care Medicine at City of Hope was the first in the United States to fully integrate across supportive care specialties and into the patient’s clinical care and is one of the largest programs of its kind today. The program provides cancer patients with comprehensive physical, psychological, social and practical support services, including care navigation; survivorship programs; specialists in cancer and aging; child life specialists; psychological and spiritual counseling; pain management; integrative medicine, such as yoga, massage and meditation; and more — all with a focus on maximizing patient and family strengths, quality of life and the ability to best engage in their treatment journey and beyond. Thanks to a gift from The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation, City of Hope is working to expand this offering across its cancer care system and to advocate for establishing supportive care as a standard best practice for cancer care in the United States.