Breast Cancer Doctor's Personal Journey: How Diagnosis Reshaped Patient Care

Sue Hwang was a busy single mom juggling three kids, three dogs and a career in radiation oncology specializing in treating breast cancer. Then the 46-year-old doctor was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. “A lot of people, when they found out I got diagnosed, were shocked, and the response was, “But you're a breast cancer doctor, how can you get breast cancer?'" says Hwang, now 48 and living in Sanford, Fla. “I want people to know cancer is non-discriminatory. Doctors get cancer, breast cancer doctors get cancer.” She wrote a book, “From Both Sides of the Curtain: Lessons and Reflections from an Oncologist's Personal Breast Cancer Journey” which releases on January 20. She shares her cancer journey on Instagram and Facebook and with PEOPLE’s Wendy Grossman Kantor in her own words. In January 2024, my best friend, Devina McCray, who is a breast surgeon, told me it was time to get my mammogram. My practice was really busy. I was planning a big retirement party. I have three kids in three different schools on three different baseball teams. It was incredibly overwhelming. I'm like, “I don't have a history, I'm totally healthy. I promise I'll get around to the mammogram in the summer." She said, “If you don’t schedule it, we’re going to go down there now." So I made an appointment. I went for the mammogram on January 25, 2024. Initially, they said, “there are a few calcifications.” In my mind I was thinking, “Okay, that’s stage zero breast cancer. That is easily treatable. Surgery, pill, you’re done.” Then they said, “We don't see a mass, but it looks a little bit asymmetric. We just want to make sure there's not something there.” We did an ultrasound and they said, “There are five masses.” I’m thinking, “This is not going to be good.” My friend was the radiologist. He asked, “Do you want to get a biopsy now?” I said, “Of course.” Devina came into the room during the biopsy. I'm lying there on the table, trying not to panic. She sits down by my head, and she starts running her fingers through my hair. As she looks at the mass on the screen, she’s crying, tears running down her face. She kept whispering, “It's gonna be okay.” I'm thinking, “This is not gonna be okay.” I got the biopsy results 24 hours later: I had stage 2 invasive lobular carcinoma. Historically, lobular cancer is about 10 percent of breast cancers, but they are on the rise. I see it in my clinic. We call this the sneaky cancer, because you don’t feel a lump. It was terrifying. There were a lot of tears. When you do the job every single day, and you see totally healthy women get breast cancer, part of you does think, “That could be me.” Honestly, the hardest part about the diagnosis was having to tell my kids. My son’s friend’s mom died of breast cancer a year before I was diagnosed. How do you tell him that you have the same diagnosis that his really good friend's mom just died of, and say, “It's going to be alright"? When I got divorced eight years ago, we literally sat the kids down in one room, and we said, “Hey, we're getting a divorce.” But at the time I was diagnosed, my sons were 15, 13, and 11. I had to tell them each differently. My oldest son, James, is probably going to grow up to be a doctor. As soon as he got over the shock, he said, “How are we going to treat this? What’s the plan?” He said, “What are you worried about? You treat this all the time.” My middle son, Sam, is very easygoing. When I told him he was really quiet. Then he took out his phone and started texting. Turns out he was doing his math homework on his phone, without me asking. My youngest, Nathan, my baby, was asking questions like, “What's it like when you die? Is it gonna be dark? Is it dark forever?” I scheduled my double mastectomy days after getting the results back. When they did the surgery, they actually stopped counting the number of tumors in my breast after 10. I got a bazillion opinions on whether I needed chemo and ended up having four cycles of chemo over two months. My other best friend, Tracy Kelly, flew down to be with me in pre-op, and she was there at the time of the procedure, and then when I came home from my double mastectomy, I slept in a recliner, and she was right beside me in my bed. She has her own family and two kids and a busy breast radiation oncology practice of her own and a husband, but she was there for me. My close friends knew what was going on, but I wasn’t planning on telling anyone else about my diagnosis — including my patients. When I had the double mastectomies [and reconstruction] I only took two weeks off and I went back to work, so people could have thought I had gone on vacation. I didn’t want to share it. I thought I could get away with it. But even though I did cold-capping during chemo, two and a half weeks after the first treatment, my hair started falling out. I went to work in scrubs and scrub caps to hide my huge bald spot. I realized “I need to tell people.” When your hair falls out, that's when you look sick. After I ended chemo, I started radiation, working every day and having radiation treatment in between seeing my patients, I'd have women coming in, and they were terrified of chemo and surgery. They would say, “I don't want mastectomies, I'm just scared.” Then I would say to them, “I'm gonna be really honest with you, I just had mastectomies. You can get through it. I got through it, and so can you.” As soon as I said that, patients let their guard down, and asked personal, practical questions and I was able to tell them what I did. It made patients feel like they could trust me more, because I was in it with them. There was a bond that I never had before I got diagnosed. On July 31, 2024, I got my ovaries out and underwent a hysterectomy. Lobular cancers are very hormonally sensitive. My ovaries were already shut off with the [hormone blocker] shot, so my options were: I could keep getting the shot every four months until I hit menopause or take out the ovaries. When they were taking out my ovaries, I was like, “Why don't you just take out my uterus?” I wasn’t going to use it again. I don't need it, I don't want it, it's less for me to worry about. I started endocrine therapy and a CDK4/6 Inhibitor. I'm much better as a doctor because of everything that I’ve gone through. I used to give very vague recommendations to my patients: eat a heart healthy diet, exercise. Now it's very different, I'm much more specific. I say, “I tried this, and this is helpful, do this.” A lot more is in my control than I thought; I'm more protective of my sleep time, I lift weights and eat enough protein so I can build muscle and keep my bones strong. I'm much more intentional about what we put in our bodies, and I meditate. If you can kind of figure out how to meditate and reduce your stress, that helps with decreasing cancer occurrence. My sons are now 17, 15, and 13. Kids are kids, and they fight all the time. The fighting doesn't bother me as much anymore. Things that used to drive me crazy, I am now grateful for. I love my job. I love my patients. I put on a brave face. But I decided to take the month of December off work to take a break from breast cancer. When you yourself are worried about dying of cancer, and then you have a patient that comes into the office, and they are worried that they are going to die of the same cancer, and they want to talk to you as their doctor about how to live through that fear — it’s really challenging. Before I got diagnosed, it was much easier for me to take a step back look at this objectively, but now I'm in it. During my break, I had more time to really read the messages I was getting on social media about my breast cancer content. The number of women that told me that they felt left behind after treatment was done, it really was shocking to me. So coming back to work, I knew something had to change: "Hey, if I got cancer, I'm going to find a purpose." And I think my purpose was really to be an advocate and just to speak out about survivorship, to figure out how to guide women down this road so that we can all live a life where we're not scared of dying from cancer. I want women to know that they are not alone. I want women to know that cancer sucks, and you will get through treatment, and you will come out on the other side. I’m still standing.