UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 5

survivor profile
All of those questions were answered at UAB —
except the marriage question; that was answered by
Will Sparks, who stood by her side throughout her
fight. He shaved his head when she lost her hair to
chemotherapy treatments, and he always tried his best
to pick her up when she was down.
Jessica and Will Sparks married October 6,
2012, a year after her diagnosis, eight months after
she finished chemotherapy, seven months after
her lumpectomy, four months after her radiation
treatments ended — and almost one year to the day
after Jessica preserved her eggs in hopes that one day,
after her body had fought through aggressive cancer
treatment, she may carry a child.
Jessica would depend on science, research and the
expertise of a team of UAB Comprehensive Cancer
Center physicians to guide her down the right path for
treatment. The UAB Breast Health Center referred
her to UAB’s Reproductive Endocrinology and
Infertility Clinic team, which offered cutting-edge
treatments to keep alive her hope of having a baby if
she survived cancer.

The beginning

Jessica Sparks
By T YLER GREER

BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR
Jessica Sparks asked many questions when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 at age 31:
Would she survive? Would she need a mastectomy — would it be one breast or both? Would she
ever marry? Would she be able to have a child of her own?

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Jessica remembers well when she first noticed
a lump on her breast. How would any woman not
remember that moment? But for the then-31-year-old,
her life was on the cusp of taking off.
She was a student in UAB’s School of Nursing,
working to get her Nurse Practitioner degree after
starting off in the Accelerated Master’s in Nursing
Pathway in 2009. Jessica had always wanted to be on
the front lines of caring for others in need. She had
just gotten a job at a Huntsville hospital and moved
there to be closer to Will. And on Friday, July 29,
Jessica was talking to Will on the phone when she
scratched an itch on her chest. That’s when she felt a
lump.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘You know, as
young as I am, this is probably nothing,’” Jessica says.
“Still, when you discover something like that, you
want to get it checked out.”
Three days later, Jessica called her physician
Cheré Stewart, M.D., associate professor in the
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who told
her to come in immediately. Dr. Stewart ordered a
mammogram and ultrasound, which didn’t reveal the
answers the physicians needed, so a biopsy was then
performed during her appointment on August 22.
Within 20 minutes of the biopsy’s completion, Jessica
learned she had breast cancer.
“I went in that morning for a mammogram
thinking it was probably benign because I’m so
young, and then I left that same afternoon with a

cancer diagnosis,” Jessica says. “No one expects to
be diagnosed with cancer, ever. And at that age,
especially.”
Three days later, on August 25, 2011, Jessica spent
that day — her 32nd birthday — with her mother
and her aunt meeting with a team of physicians from
UAB’s Breast Health Center to discuss her options.
“I felt like I was in ‘The Twilight Zone,’” Jessica
says. “My mom, my aunt and I had planned a fun day
of girl stuff for my birthday. Instead, you’re faced with
a ton of decisions that will alter the course of the rest
of your life.”

Preserving fertility

The idea of personalized medicine has many
meanings, including how to care for a patient long
term when the