When Dr. Sarah DeLong, Director of Butler Tech Adult Education Programs and former Dean of Healthcare Programs, discovered a lump during a self-exam last October, she never imagined her professional and personal worlds would collide so profoundly.
After a diagnosis of breast cancer, what began with a double mastectomy quickly turned into months of chemotherapy and radiation. Through it all, Dr. DeLong continued her work—balancing leadership with treatment—until one day during infusion at UC Health, she found herself in the care of two medical assistants who knew her better than she expected: Ronesia Stone and Jada Calhoun, students in Butler Tech’s Medical Assisting (MA) to Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) Bridge Program in collaboration with UC Health.
Recently, the three reunited on Butler Tech’s LeSourdsville Campus to reflect on the experience and the power of full-circle care.
“It just blew my mind,” Dr. DeLong reflected. “The very students I’ve been pouring into were now helping me live.”
Jada, a medical assistant in infusion for just a year, said the connection was immediate.
“I saw her name and thought, there’s no way,” she recalled. “When she walked in, I kept it professional on the outside, but inside I was freaking out—thinking, I’m really doing vitals on my Dean right now. But she never made me feel nervous. She was amazing.”
Ronesia, a five-year UC Health medical assistant, had a similar moment of realization.
“I saw her for a few weeks and didn’t say anything,” she said. “We were just talking, taking vitals, and then I mentioned Butler Tech. She said, ‘Oh, really?’ and we made the connection.”
Both students said the experience deepened their sense of professionalism.
“You never know who’s going to come in,” said Jada.
“I can be having a bad day,” added Ronesia, “but the minute I hit the door, you’d never know. I just try to smile.”
Even as classmates asked how the Dean was doing, the two never shared that they saw her weekly. Dr. DeLong said their discretion reflected “the ultimate level of HIPAA and professionalism.”
“These students cared for me for months without ever mentioning Butler Tech or the program,” she said. “They took care of me as a patient, not their Dean.”
Ronesia and Jada are both part of the MA-to-LPN Bridge Program, a customized pathway for UC Health staff that Dr. DeLong helped establish. The schedule allows employees to continue working part-time with rotations that change every 10 weeks. Balancing both roles, the students said, takes focus and flexibility—“one day at a time.”
“I have never seen so many calendars in my house—and everywhere,” Ronesia said with a laugh. “Over the last year, I’ve learned to keep a uniform from each place in my car. You wake up and think, wait, what day is it?”
Jada said she tries to connect her lessons between the classroom and the clinic.
“What helps me is absorbing what we’re learning in school and trying to apply it at work,” Jada reflected. “If I learn something at work, I bring it into class and make those connections.”
For Dr. DeLong, the experience reaffirmed what she values most about Butler Tech.
“Butler Tech puts all of us as people first—our humanity, our families, our kids, our journeys, whatever we’re going through,” she said. “This is just another example of that.”
She paused before summing it up simply:
“It is humbling and overwhelming to see the students I am serving in this role are the same caretakers working to help me stay alive. It’s just full circle. These medical assistants turning nurses worked in perfect harmony along with the doctors, surgeons, nurses, and schedulers to save my life. I am forever grateful.”