Claudia Hunter has worked in the Northwell Health system for over 20 years. A single mother of twin brothers Andre and Sandre Cheng, she originally dreamt of becoming a physician in the U.S. after a terrifying experience finding care for Andre in their home country of Jamaica when the boys were still infants.
After struggling to build a life in Queens where she immigrated to alone in 1995 in pursuit of medical school, she soon realized her hopes of becoming a doctor were impossible without a social security number and enough money to cover tuition — both of which she did not have.
But, nearly 30 years after Hunter put her wishes aside, both Andre and Sandre have fulfilled their own dreams of becoming doctors at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills hospital, honoring the hard choice their mother made to sacrifice her dreams and provide them with the opportunity, instead.
The Cheng twins currently work together at the Forest Hills hospital in different departments.
Early life for Hunter and the twins
Hunter, 55, was just 22 at the time of Andre and Sandre’s birth in 1992, and she raised the twins in Jamaica for the first year of the boys’ lives.
However, Hunter said Andre soon fell ill. He ran a high fever and kept throwing up, lying limp in her arms, which quickly prompted her to take him to a doctor.
She said the health system in Jamaica is not particularly great, and medical insurance is very expensive. She said many residents like Hunter, who was working in the country as a secretary at the time, couldn’t afford insurance and were forced to pay out-of-pocket for everything.
The doctor sent her and Andre home without a diagnosis, Hunter said, but Andre’s illness persisted.
“I went from one doctor to another, and I thought he was going to die,” Hunter recalled. “It was at that time that I said, ‘I need to be a doctor.’”
From that point, Hunter set her sights on opportunities in the United States and immigrated to Queens in hopes of attending medical school. She sent the twins to Hong Kong to live with their paternal grandmother while she travelled to Elmhurst to stay with her aunt and start planning their future.
Shortly after her arrival, however, Hunter realized it was not feasible to put herself through medical school.
“I was young at the time — I just had this dream in my head,” Hunter said. “I came here and didn’t have any family except one aunt who, like myself, didn’t have any documents… I came here and did what I had to do. I was not willing to sacrifice that amount of time for my career.”
Hunter put her dreams aside while she pursued employment elsewhere, working as a caretaker and house cleaner at the recommendation of her aunt.
Soon enough, she said she began missing her sons terribly. So, Hunter set herself on a mission to bring them to the U.S. to live with her. Finally, in 1997, she traveled to Hong Kong to retrieve them and bring them back to Queens once conditions were more stable and she’d saved enough money to support them.
Times were tough when the boys were young, she explained, and she often could only afford very basic necessities. However, she said her sons were disciplined and understood that their role was to learn as much as they could while she worked.
Hunter eventually became a nurse aide in the emergency department at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, where she worked for 12 years until becoming an inventory clerk in the hospital’s Interventional Radiology department.
Andre and Sandre’s education
Andre and Sandre recalled many plane rides in their childhood, initially traveling on several flights from Jamaica to Hong Kong. After briefly flying to Indonesia to stay with another relative, the boys flew back to Hong Kong before their mother retrieved them and officially brought them with her to the U.S. — all of which occurred within the first four years of their lives.
“We were very, very young, and I don’t know if we knew everything that was happening,” Andre noted. “But we knew we were going into the air and flying in this big machine. That was always cool for us.”
“We started remembering our travels when our mother came to pick us up,” Sandre added. “To this day, I still think being able to fly is one of the biggest accomplishments of man.”
Up until the Cheng twins were about 10-years-old, they dreamed of becoming pilots. Hunter said she bought them little toy planes and took them to the airport to watch planes take-off and land.
Once the boys enrolled in middle school, though, their sentiments began to change. Their curricula focused more on science and math skills than skills needed for piloting, and they began developing a love for life sciences.
Hunter remembered her sons approaching her and telling her of their career plan changes, the boys both noting that they were more likely to make more money as doctors and mentioning that she’d previously expressed wanting to become one, as well.
“I just took it at face value,” Hunter said. “At first, I felt a bit guilty. I didn’t want them to give up what they love to fulfill my dreams. I didn’t want to sacrifice their career.”
When the boys entered Brooklyn Technical High School, Sandre said he experienced culture shock, as the school was much more specialized than any of their previous education. “There were a lot of people who were very smart and competitive from all different cultures,” he said. “That lit a fire under us.”
Nonetheless, Andre said he and his brother loved learning about biology and genetics, and how both can be applied to improve people’s lives. They both majored in biomedical sciences for the remainder of their high school career.
While Andre said pursuing a career in medicine was never formally discussed between him and his brother — and he believes they would have respected each other’s decision if they pursued different career paths — they still went through it together.
“We both figured, you know, we’re good at sciences and we both want to do something positive in society,” Sandre said. “We both inspire each other.”
Getting into medical school soon became their next challenge. While they both received scholarships through 1199SEIU, Hunter’s healthcare workers’ union, the brothers’ paths began diverging and becoming shaped by their own interests and specialties.
Andre applied to Columbia University, receiving a full scholarship that covered his entire tuition costs. He remained at the university’s medical school, the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, for his doctorate and an internal medicine residency.
He recalled diving head-first into the course load and taking 27 credits his first semester, which he admitted overwhelmed him at first. “I don’t know how I did it,” Andre said, laughing. “That first semester was insane.”
After graduating and completing his residency, Andre completed a cardiology fellowship at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset and an advanced imaging fellowship through Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before becoming a cardiologist in the Northwell system, where he currently works primarily out of the LIJ Forest Hills.
“I knew as a doctor, I could really provide a service,” Andre said, explaining why he pursued cardiology as a specialty. “You’re always going to be useful and needed.”
Sandre, on the other hand, attended Stony Brook University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology. He was then accepted into New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY, where he studied anesthesiology while interning at the Elmhurst Hospital Center and completing an anesthesiology residency at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
“I remember the day I found out I got into medical school — I was ecstatic,” Sandre said. “I was at an interview at Hofstra and I threw my hands up. Everybody was looking at me like, ‘What is going on with this guy?’ But then I could go to every other interview with no stress because I already had a spot.”
What drew him to anesthesiology, Sandre explained, is the similarities he feels it shares with piloting a plane — he likened the “take-off” to the process of safely putting a patient to sleep; the duration of the patient’s sedation during surgery as “coasting on autopilot”; and the “landing” as safely waking the patient back up.
Hard work and long hours
Both Andre and Sandre, as well as Hunter, noted the personality differences between the twin brothers. Andre described himself as determined and studious with a high drive for completing his work. Sandre, on the other hand, said he is more laid back and spent much of his academic career leaving studying for the last minute — that is, at least until he entered medical school.
“I’m not the best at studying,” Sandre explained. “Medical school was a whole different beast. And then residency was an even greater challenge, where I learned all my free time was no longer there anymore.”
However, Andre said that bore no consequence on his brother’s success in the medical field.
“I’m proud of [Sandre] and admire that he’s able to be very relaxed and laid back but still succeed,” Andre said. “I’m always amazed by that.”
The Cheng twins both work long hours. Andre, who said he primarily conducts non-invasive imaging and non-surgical procedures, sees patients at his office in Rego Park. He is also scheduled for consultations at the LIJ Forest Hills, where he sees sick patients and advises cardiology teams.
His responsibilities generally include reading cardiac MRIs and CT scans, and he said patients are often referred to him after hospital stays for follow-up appointments and continuity of care after recovering from illnesses.
Andre said some of his shifts can occur during relatively normal business hours, beginning at 8 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. But, on days where there are long lists of patients and complicated cases at the hospital, he could be home much later in the evening.
As for Sandre, his shifts in the operating room can last anywhere from 10 hours to well over 14. On average, he said he works between 50-60 hours per week.
Sandre said in general, he leaves his home at 6 a.m. and conducts presurgical testing at the hospital before the first surgical case at 7:30 a.m. He sits with patients before surgery and explains to them how anesthesia works, answering any questions or concerns they might have.
On days he is not on call, he can be relieved from duty as early as 7 p.m. But, on days he is on call, he can stay as late as 9 p.m. and still have to respond to calls for emerging cases in the middle of the night even if he’s at home. While said he is allowed to sleep, if he’s called in, there is a limited amount of time he has to respond and get to the hospital.
Some days he’s required to stay at the hospital for a 24-hour shift, and he said it’s not always easy to sleep those nights.
Because the Cheng twins work in the same hospital, Andre and Sandre’s shifts occasionally overlap, which allows them to work with patients together for esophageal echocardiograms, which is cardiac imaging that requires a patient to be sedated.
Twice a year, the brothers travel to Jamaica to visit family and volunteer at a local clinic in St. Elizabeth for a few days, providing medical care to patients in the country who might not have access to it the rest of the year. After the country was ravaged by Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, which destroyed the clinic the brothers volunteered in, they instead collected food, funds and other resources to help rebuild the clinic.
Helping patients and honoring family
Even on their toughest days, the twins say it’s rewarding to know their patients are healthy and safe.
Andre said many patients, whom he meets at some of their lowest points in the hospital, experiencing anything from pain to heart failure, are often grateful after receiving care and instructions from him. He said he uses “tough love” and strikes a balance between professionalism and paternalism to encourage his patients to take better care of themselves.
“It’s nice to have that experience — that you really made an impact on someone’s life,” Andre said. “You’re helping them get healthier, and they’re going to live longer. That’s always rewarding.”
And, Sandre, pointed out, not every moment of their lives is dedicated to work. He said he enjoys spending time with friends and family, and he plays video games to help him unwind after a long day at work. He and his family, including Andre and their mother, spent the Sunday after Thanksgiving enjoying dinner and watching football together.
“Me and my brother are actually big fantasy football fans,” Sandre said. “Whenever we get a free Sunday, we get together and spend the whole day just watching football and snacking and having a good time with family and friends.”
Andre said as hard as it was for him and Sandre to get through medical school, he admired his mother’s tenacity coming to the U.S. alone as a 25-year-old woman and supporting him and his brother despite the many challenges they faced.
“Her hard work inspired us to really take advantage of the opportunity we had,” Andre said. “I wanted to be a doctor for many reasons, and my mom wanting to be one was part of that.”
Sandre said while their mother always worked in the medical field, it wasn’t until she began telling them stories about her immigration to the U.S. that he and Andre truly understood what she went through, and what she gave up, to give the twins the opportunities they had.
“We want to make her proud that in the next generation, we can accomplish more and more,” Sandre said.
Hunter said she’s always made it a point to teach her sons that they must do whatever is necessary to be successful and make their plans a reality. But, she said the true way her sons are fulfilling her dreams is not through their professions as doctors, but rather the service they provide to other human beings.
“All my life, I really wanted to help people heal,” Hunter said. “I mean, you can’t heal everybody, but that’s something I want for them. That’s what’s fulfilling to me.”
She said she is incredibly proud of her sons who dedicated their lives to a cause close to her heart — serving the community and helping those in need. She said that’s all she ever wanted for them, and she hopes to see them continue to embrace this duty in the future.
Andre said his main goal right now is balancing his responsibilities to patients in his office and the hospital so he can provide the best service possible. He also hopes to open another office closer to the community he grew up in, near South Jamaica and Hollis, to help fill gaps in care people in the neighborhood might experience without enough specialists.
Sandre said his main goal is to continue teaching new students in the field, eventually transitioning his career to a more educational role so the next generation of doctors can be better equipped to serve patients in need.
“I’m very grateful I’m doing something that I feel is meaningful and doesn’t give me too much stress,” Sandre said. “I find joy passing down information about all the things I learned to those behind me.”
