30 years ago this week, I was a young adult diagnosed with breast cancer.  If you’re a young adult with cancer today, it would be hard to imagine what it was like in 1983.  Even the phrase, young adults with cancer, often provoked a reaction of surprise and dismissal.  While feelings of isolation and alienation [...]

Vital Options International presents Advocacy in Action bringing together influential leaders of the cancer advocacy community to address:  Personalized Medicine: What it means, its relevance for patients, collection of tissue specimens, and a discussion on metastatic breast cancer in young women.  Part 4 of 4. Joining Vital Options Founder and CEO, Selma Schimmel, as co-hosts [...]

The Group Room at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna was made possible, in part, by: VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Selma Schimmel, Founder & CEO, Vital Options International This is Selma Schimmel for The Group Room at the ESMO 2012 Congress happening now in Vienna.  And, I’m happy to introduce you to [...]

Young Adults CAN get lung cancer?  HUH? Meet Darby Anderson, K.C. Oakley and Maggie Eisenberg who lost their dear friend, Jill Costello to lung cancer when she was just 22 years old. Through this loss and the guidance of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, Jill’s Legacy was born.   VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Maggie Eisenberg, [...]

The young adult cancer movement is growing. Meet several advocates in the young adult movement (Doug Ulman, Matthew Zachary, Heidi Adams, Maimah Karmo, Michelle Whitlock, Elissa Thorner-Bantug, Danielle Tindle and Joe Schneider) and Dr. Leonard Sender, Medical Director of CHOC Children’s Cancer Institute and the Director of the Young Adult Cancer Program at the University [...]

  National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week is April 2-8, 2012. Join us in spreading the word and encouraging young adults everywhere to be proactive about their health. Did you know? More than 70,000 young adults are diagnosed with cancer every year. That’s one every eight minutes. Cancer is the number one disease killer of [...]

  National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week is April 2-8, 2012. Join us in spreading the word and encouraging young adults everywhere to be proactive about their health. THIS YEAR More than 70,000 young adults under the age of 40 will hear the words ‘You have CANCER’; that’s one EVERY eight minutes. We must UNITE [...]

  Young adults face unique psychosocial concerns such as fertility preservation, body image, sexuality, education, insurance issues, employment reintegration and long term effects of treatment. Meet ten young adult survivors living in Southern California and Dr. Leonard Sender, Medical Director of CHOC Children’s Cancer Institute and the Director of the Young Adult Cancer Program at [...]

How I Lost My Uterus and Found My Voice may sound like a complicated story, but this book is as honest, charming and funny a story as you’re likely to read this year.  Flowing from inspiring to heartbreaking and back again, Michelle Whitlock’s memoir is a bold and thought-provoking journey that opens up about the [...]

  Yesterday, I came across a blog posting on Nancy’s Point.  I had never visited Nancy’s Point, but while on Twitter, @CancerCenter was asking Nancy’s question “What has cancer stolen from you?”  As is the case with Twitter, 140 words or less (often in the form of a question) catches your eye and leads you [...]