Young women face unique challenges
By Sheryl
February 25, 2010
When my unexpected breast cancer diagnosis came at 34, I felt that I had aged 20 years in just a few weeks I had to learn to deal with a lot in a short period of time. I was inundated with a whole new medical language (and medical issues) filled with words I had never encountered — like pathology and prognosis, adjuvant therapy and genetic risk factors, oncologists and lymph nodes. I was overwhelmed and dizzy with difficult choices and realizations. After all, not many of us in our 30s think about anything but a healthy and robust life ahead. I listened, I learned, I desperately tried to turn my despair into a purposeful and focused path forward away from gloom.
But it was difficult. Young women were quite alone and isolated back in 1988 when it came to a breast cancer diagnosis. Friends could not quite comprehend a cancer diagnosis in someone their own age. It was both frightening and a bit too close to home. And my family, for the most part, though supportive and concerned, was just as perplexed and startled by the diagnosis as I was. They were just as confused and fearful of the diagnosis as if it was happening to them.
Desperate for support, I searched for some kind of camaraderie in a cancer support group at a local YMCA, but felt even more singled out when I sat in a roomful of women well into their 50s, 60s and beyond.
Finally, someone who understands?
An email turns up in my inbox this morning that I wish had been written all those years ago. But even today, it comforts me, still.
“Tackling Issues Young Women Face After a Breast Cancer Diagnosis,” it is titled. I anxiously open it. “Young women diagnosed with breast cancer are uniquely impacted by issues often not faced by older women,” it begins.
I think back to my handful of visits to that support group at the Y so many years before. My two babies are at home with my husband, safe in their cribs, as I listen to other mothers – these with grown children and grandchildren, too – discuss their issues. They discuss things like dealing with fears that their children or grandchildren will be genetically predisposed to cancer. They speak of other medical problems, like arthritis, that might be impacted by their cancers. So many of them share an almost non-chalance that I covet but cannot even remotely fathom for myself. If you live long enough, after all, you almost expect that something will threaten your health, they seem to say. They “get” each other. They are in it together with the same issues and similar experiences.
My issues were different ones, indeed. Would my children grow up to know me and love me, or would they have to remember me or mourn me? I worried about my future fertility. And what about my body – how would I manage without my own breast, the breast that I was not ready to discard? My future was suddenly an unknown, frightening place; how would the chemotherapy affect my health, going forward? Would I be doomed to suffer other health issues at an age too young for those, too?
Of course, I would not ever call any woman “fortunate” to be given a breast cancer diagnosis at a relatively young age. But what I’ll say is that any younger woman facing the challenge today is facing a somewhat easier challenge. Shock and confusion has been, if not replaced, at least supported by more understanding and more resources.
Young Survival Coalition >>
Pink Ribbon Girls >>
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Join the American Cancer Society’s movement for more birthdays and less cancer >>
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