Dr. Sue Hwang knew something was wrong as soon as she saw her scan results.
As an oncologist for more than a decade, she had helped thousands of patients navigate their mammogram results to screen for breast cancer.
Her own diagnosis was still a shock — although all her previous scans had been all clear, this one found five concerning masses on her right breast, along with an abnormal lymph node.
“It’s like, this has got to be a joke. There’s no way in one year I’ve developed five tumors,” she told Business Insider. “That’s not possible. And I didn’t feel it.”
Leading up to the diagnosis, Hwang told Business Insider she had no symptoms, and no reason to think she was at risk of breast cancer.
She was healthy, played tennis daily, and balanced her busy career with parenting three sons as a single mom.
The diagnosis — in January 2024, when Hwang was 46 — felt like a spiral of bad news, as she learned treatment would be much more involved than she hoped.
After multiple surgeries, including bilateral mastectomies, chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy, Hwang is in remission.
Now 48, she’s poised to publish her new memoir “From Both Sides of the Curtain: Lessons and Reflections from an Oncologist’s Breast Cancer Journey,” available January 20.
Being a patient prompted her to embrace vulnerability and made her a better doctor along the way, she said.
“Being more open to others about my struggles, helped me heal because I realized I’m not alone. Everyone is struggling, and by admitting it, it makes you more human. Patients were able to relate to me a lot better,” she said.
From doctor to patient
Hwang said her first response to the diagnosis was fear about breaking the news to her three sons — then ages 15, 13, and 11.
“I was just thinking about my kids and ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen if this kills me?'” she said.
Unlike most of her patients, Hwang knew what to expect from treatment and how to make sense of her prognosis. Breast cancer cases are on the rise, but it is a very treatable disease, particularly if caught early. She thinks of breast cancer patients as the “straight A honors students” of the cancer ward, with as many as 95% considered low-risk, expected to be alive and well 10 years after diagnosis.
That’s in stark contrast to other forms of cancer: pancreatic cancer, for instance, has a five-year survival rate of about 12%.
Follow-up imaging showed Hwang’s cancer was more extensive than expected. Her doctors, who were also her friends and colleagues, gave her a survival rate of 85%. In the abstract, it’s an encouraging number. But all Hwang could think about was the 15% chance that something would go wrong.
“It’s a great number, but I heard that number, and I think that was the first time I actually just full-on lost it in a doctor’s office,” she said. “I’m doing all of this and you’re only going to give me a B. That was how I looked at it as a patient.”
The lingering cost of cancer
Despite the anxiety and side effects of treatment, Hwang said the biggest challenge has been coming to terms with her identity as a cancer survivor.
She had hoped to return to life as usual. Her work as a doctor was about treating the disease, but nothing in her training had prepared her for how things would change after her own diagnosis.
“You are physically not the same person. By the time I was done with treatment, my breasts were gone, my ovaries were gone, my uterus was gone, my hair was gone and it’s a huge emotional toll,” she said.
Hwang said she’s still figuring out what her new role as a survivor means for her.
Prior to the diagnosis, Hwang said she took pride in keeping her personal struggles private.
People would say ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ and I would let them think I had it all together,” Hwang said. “I never told people sometimes it sucks, I get home, and I’m exhausted, I want to cry because it’s so lonely.”
She started talking about her struggles, and asking her patients for advice: on how they recovered, and how they came to terms with the major changes to their bodies and their lives.
For now, her strategy has been working less, focusing more on her family, and prioritizing her health in the face of uncertainty.
Above all, she hopes that sharing her experience can offer support to patients and someday push the healthcare industry to provide more structure after treatment.
“I really want people to know they’re not alone,” Hwang said. “It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to have anxiety. This is just the nature of the disease.”
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