White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has opened up about the physical and emotional toll of fighting breast cancer while continuing to serve as one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers, describing the challenge of undergoing chemotherapy while leading the White House staff.
Wiles, 69, announced earlier this month that she was cancer-free after six months of treatment for early-stage breast cancer. Following an appointment at the Mayo Clinic, Wiles said her pathology results came back clear. “I am cancer free,” she said at the time.
In an essay published Sunday by USA Today, Wiles detailed what it was like to balance the disease with a job she described as “one of the most demanding jobs imaginable.”
“Fighting cancer is brutal and unrelenting,” Wiles wrote. The disease, she said, occupied her thoughts from the moment she woke up and sometimes even while she slept.
“The balance was not easy,” she wrote. “There were days when strength just meant fighting the disease with all I had. Other days, strength meant getting out of bed, getting dressed and walking into the office to do one of the most demanding jobs imaginable.”
“Most days, I carried the full weight of both.”
Wiles said her treatment affected her stamina, mobility, and, at times, her ability to focus. She acknowledged that she could not always be everywhere she wanted or needed to be, while colleagues inside and outside the White House stepped in to help carry additional responsibilities.
But continuing to work also gave Wiles something she said was important during her treatment: a sense of purpose beyond the disease. “Cancer can make your world very small,” she wrote, describing a life that could otherwise become centered on chemotherapy appointments, blood tests, scans, medications, and side effects.
“I worked hard not to let breast cancer become the center of everything,” Wiles wrote. “Instead, I directed as much of my energy as I could toward doing my job.”
She said she knew people were watching and questioning whether she would still be able to lead effectively while undergoing treatment.
“Would she be able to lead? Be consumed by her illness? Be less effective?” Wiles wrote.
For Wiles, work provided an answer to those questions by reminding her that her identity extended beyond her diagnosis. “Work did not make the cancer disappear from my mind,” she wrote. “However, it reminded me that I was still myself – and that my life was about more than my disease.”
Wiles also credited the people around her with helping her continue working through treatment, including White House colleagues, her two daughters, extended family, friends, and her medical team.
“I know without a doubt that winning, leading and succeeding are team sports,” she wrote. “Talent matters, but talent alone is not enough.”
“Throughout my fight with cancer, a talented, hardworking and deeply devoted team, inside the White House and outside, made all the difference,” she added.
Wiles said her doctors ultimately found no residual cancer following successful surgery. But she acknowledged that the treatment itself had left work to be done.
“It was a difficult road,” she wrote. “Because chemotherapy is, in a word, a b*tch.”
“The next stage will require a serious commitment to rebuilding what treatment took from me,” Wiles wrote.
Wiles first disclosed her diagnosis in March, when Trump announced that his chief of staff had early-stage breast cancer. She continued working during her treatment, including a July visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with Senate Republicans.
Wiles has served as Trump’s chief of staff since the beginning of his second administration, becoming the first woman to hold the position. She previously served as co-campaign manager for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and has worked with Trump since 2015.
When she announced that she was cancer-free earlier this month, Wiles thanked her family, friends, doctors, and others who supported her throughout treatment. She also specifically thanked Trump for his support.
In her new essay, she again expressed gratitude for the president.
“I will always be grateful to President Donald Trump for the kindness and compassion while I was undergoing treatment,” she wrote. Wiles said the experience ultimately changed how she viewed her own life. “Cancer does not have to take away who you are,” she wrote.
For Wiles, she said, moving beyond cancer means returning to the work that sustained her, while also embracing her roles as a mother, grandmother and friend.
“Yes, cancer took something from me, but it also gave me a deeper appreciation for the people who carried me, the purpose that sustained me and the preciousness of every day,” she wrote.
“And, most especially, I am grateful to God.”
.png)
.png)
