{"id":315304,"date":"2025-10-19T06:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T06:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/315304\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T06:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T06:03:09","slug":"phoenix-physician-assistant-who-diagnoses-breast-cancer-becomes-patient-herself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/315304\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix physician assistant who diagnoses breast cancer becomes patient herself"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 Breast cancer is the most common cancer<\/a> in Arizona with more than 5,000 new cases every year.<\/p>\n

One Valley healthcare provider knows that all too well after her own battle with the disease she\u2019s dedicated her life to treating.<\/p>\n

It was a shock for Maureen Hamel-Schwartz to go from helping breast cancer patients to becoming one. She\u2019s delivered that life-changing diagnosis to countless women over the years, but said nothing could have prepared her to face it herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wear this coat. It doesn\u2019t mean that I can\u2019t get cancer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Accepting that reality wasn\u2019t easy for Hamel-Schwartz. For more than two decades, the physician assistant has diagnosed women with breast cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was terrifying,\u201d said Hamel-Schwartz, a physician assistant at Optum<\/a>. \u201cNever thought it would be me.\u201d <\/p>\n

But in 2023, she unexpectedly found herself on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hit me out of nowhere. Never in a million years did I think I\u2019m going to get breast cancer. I have no risk factors. Well guess what, it\u2019s like 60% of people diagnosed don\u2019t have any of the known risk factors,\u201d said Hamel-Schwartz.<\/p>\n

In an instant, everything changed. First, she underwent chemotherapy and then surgery, and radiation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day I went to comb my hair and all of a sudden it\u2019s just coming out in piles,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Once the worst of it was over, Hamel-Schwartz couldn\u2019t wait to get back to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust change my mindset from cancer, cancer, cancer and me getting treated, to I want to go start helping people again,\u201d said Hamel-Schwartz.<\/p>\n

Now, she feels like new person. She relates to her patients in a way only fellow survivors can understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it does to you is, no one really knows it until they go through it,\u201d said Hamel-Schwartz. \u201cI tell them I\u2019ve been on the journey. I\u2019m going to be here to help you through your journey,\u201d<\/p>\n

If Hamel-Schwartz could go back in time, she\u2019d do things differently and take her own advice by focusing on prevention.<\/p>\n

She regrets letting busy life get in the way of keeping up with routine self-breast exams and mammograms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have stage three cancer and it was a good size tumor. And I wish I would have gotten my mammogram on time and could have caught it early,\u201d said Hamel-Schwartz.<\/p>\n

The threat of the cancer coming back is always on Hamel-Schwartz\u2019s mind, but her personal experience shifted her perspective and strengthened her sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to be able to help other people as much as I can going through it, for them to know they\u2019re not alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her main message for others is to never miss vital screening appointments. The American Cancer Society<\/a> recommends yearly mammograms for women starting at age 45 and even younger for those that are high-risk.<\/p>\n

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Arizona with more than 5,000 new cases…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":315305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,35876,5643,158513,1587,7182,15634,158512,1589,7183,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-315304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-american-cancer-society","10":"tag-arizona","11":"tag-arizona-breast-cancer","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-azfamily","14":"tag-breast-cancer","15":"tag-maureen-hamel-schwartz","16":"tag-phoenix","17":"tag-phoenix-news","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115399321387880287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}