'I Though My Persistent Cough Was Just a Cold...It Turned Out to be a Nearly Deadly Cancer'

A sad reality is that most mothers put their own health on the back burner. A recent Gallup Poll revealed that 75% of mothers with children 18 years old and younger in their home struggle to prioritize their own health. That's a staggering statistic that could potentially impact women's overall mortality rates.

Just take what happened to Heather Quintana Suchan, a mom who wholeheartedly believed that her lingering cough was just a typical seasonal sickness.

"I was doing what every mom does at that time of year- trying to navigate the holidays with my two young sons and a hectic job. I kept thinking, 'I'm around kids all the time, everybody gets sick, this will pass,'" Suchan recalls to Parade. "Even when it became pneumonia, that still felt explainable to me since it was December/January and the height of cold and flu season."

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She kept pushing through the illness, but after seeing three different doctors and undergoing multiple tests, she grew tired of guessing what her symptoms meant. No matter what the doctors ordered, she wasn't responding the way she should have. After many doctor visits and several rounds of antibiotics, she still wasn't improving. A CT scan revealed she had nodules in her lungs.

"I decided to get a bronchoscopy, which allowed the doctors to sample and test one of the nodules. That was the turning point, and unfortunately, I was diagnosed with stage IV EGFR-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)."

A Rare Cancer and a Hard Battle

Another reason she couldn't have fathomed anything worse than a cold was that Suchan was not a smoker by any stretch of the imagination.

"It is not uncommon for lung cancer in younger patients or never-smokers to be mistaken at first for something more routine because the symptoms can overlap with very common illnesses," says Dr. Ravi Salgia, professor and chair of the Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research at City of Hope. "A cough, fatigue, or congestion does not automatically point to lung cancer. But when symptoms persist or do not improve as expected, they deserve further evaluation."

"Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, claiming more lives each year than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined," Salgia states. "The most common form, non-small cell lung cancer (or non-smoking lung cancer), accounts for 80–85% of all cases, and small cell lung cancer makes up the other 15%."

While the reality of the illness was terrifying, the scariest part of the entire ordeal was telling her two young sons about her frightening diagnosis.

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"Telling them was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do," she admits. "It just feels so unfair to ask children that young to try to make sense of something so frightening. We had a big cry together in the kitchen that day."

A colleague connected the terrified mom to a care team, and she began making space for treatment. Her typical chemo infusion would take hours to complete and often left her feeling raw and exhausted. But when her care team found her an alternative treatment, everything changed.

Salgia says that through quick diagnosis and extensive testing, they learned she was a candidate for a new five-minute treatment, RYBREVANT FASPRO. The revolutionary drug has a lower rate of administration-related side effects compared with IV delivery, he explains.

"That matters because those reactions can be difficult for patients and burdensome in the clinic," the doctor added.

For Suchan, it was a complete game-changer.

"My five-minute treatment with RYBREVANT FASPRO feels completely different. Yes, practically, it gives me real time back," she says. "But emotionally, it changes the experience, too. It feels less disruptive. It feels more manageable. It lets treatment take up a little less space in my life, which is incredibly meaningful when you're trying to be a working mom and keep living your life. For me, getting that time back is not a small thing. Those are real hours with my kids, with my family, and with the parts of my life that make me feel like myself."

The Gift of Time

Luckily, Suchan saw a 60–70% tumor shrinkage early on in the context of her Stage IV EGFR-positive NSCLC. Now, it is a matter of being in "maintenance mode," meaning keeping consistent with treatments to keep the cancer from growing back. Suchan admits that she waffles between hope and overwhelm.

"It's a safety net in the sense that I'm grateful to be on something that is working for me and helping keep the cancer under control. That gives me a lot of comfort," she says. "At the same time, of course, it's also a reminder. When you're in ongoing treatment and getting regular scans, you never fully forget why you're there. But I've made peace with that. I don't look at maintenance as a bad thing. I look at it as part of how I get to keep living my life."

While she isn't out of the woods yet, her self-advocacy, without a doubt, has helped her go further than she would have had she just continued to write off her symptoms.

"I think women, especially moms, are so used to pushing through," says Suchan. "We minimize symptoms, explain them away, and tell ourselves we'll deal with it later because everyone else needs us first. My biggest message is: don't do that when something keeps lingering."

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This story was originally published May 2, 2026 at 4:48 AM.