Today I learned that around 72,000 young adults are diagnosed with cancer each year. That's around one diagnosed every eight minutes. Cancer is the number one disease killer of people under the age of 40.These are stats I didn't know before, and I imagine many of those outside the young adult cancer movement don't know either.
April 2-8, 2012 is the National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week®. Hooray for us and who knew we had a week dedicated to us?
Those with cancer between 15-40 years old face unique concerns such as fertility, body image, cognitive function, long-term effects, education, insurance and employment. Young adults with cancer deal with distinctly different issues based on developmental life cycles of their age group. Young adult cancers may also have different biological factors that are now being studied so better treatments can be developed. Young adult cancers, in general, are being left behind in clinical trials and research. Much focus goes into cancer for those over 40 and for pediatrics, but us 15-40 are left behind for many different reasons (our likelihood of survival is less than those over 40 so not a ton of long-term research is completed, we don't participate in and lack of clinical trials and not many doctors specialize in our age group). Also something for all of us to consider is they say there is a delay in diagnosis for young adults and children, because symptoms are overlooked by physicians, who may have a low index of suspicion for cancer in kids or young adults. So whether you are a young adult or have kids: listen up! Listen to your body when something is wrong, know the symptoms of the disease and take care of your body. Please help by sharing this information.
Different Set of Cancers for Young Adults:
Dr. Bleyer identified the types of cancers mostly likely to affect young adults as breast, lymphoma, melanoma, sarcoma, thyroid cancer, and gonadal cancer (testicular for males and cervical carcinoma and ovarian stromal cell tumors for females).
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