"I'm still young, so it probably isn't cancer." Many young people think this way. In reality, cancer, like hypertension or diabetes, is more common among the middle-aged and elderly. Lung cancer, notorious for its high mortality rate, also carries greater risk the longer one has smoked, so the proportion of elderly patients is overwhelmingly high. When people are young, there is little occasion to visit a hospital in the first place. Even when they feel slightly unwell, most brush it off as nothing. That is why cancer, arriving without warning, comes as an even more unfamiliar and bewildering reality for young patients.
In Korea, breast cancer and colorectal cancer stand out as representative cancers with a relatively high number of patients in their 20s and 30s. But in lung cancer, sarcoma, and skin cancer, which I treat, I also encounter young patients without difficulty. They share a few things in common. Even when they notice something wrong with their bodies, or even feel a lump, they often dismiss it, thinking "surely it can't be cancer," and put off going to the hospital. Busy with studies or work, they procrastinate on getting tested. As a result, quite a few patients come to the examination room only after the cancer has progressed considerably or metastasized to other organs.
Patients who develop cancer at a young age begin to worry about the life that comes afterward from the moment treatment starts. Middle-aged and elderly patients often focus on the immediate pain and treatment before them. Young patients, by contrast, want to return to work as soon as possible and ask first about how to balance treatment with their jobs. For example, if they need radiation therapy, it is common for them to ask whether they can receive treatment before going to work or after leaving the office. They hope that even if their lives are paused for a while by treatment, that period will not stretch on too long.
Concerns about marriage, childbirth, and child-rearing cannot be overlooked either. Patients about to marry worry whether cancer treatment will affect future pregnancy and childbirth. Parents with young children cautiously ask whether undergoing chemotherapy might have a negative effect on their child. Even while enduring grueling treatment, they seem to worry more about their families than themselves. In this way, for young cancer patients, treatment is at once the process of overcoming cancer and the process of protecting the life they will go on to share with their families.
Most young patients endure treatment bravely. But because this is a period when responsibilities for social life, family, and the future are beginning to grow, the anxiety they must bear alone is by no means small. What they need is not simply the technology to treat cancer. There must also be medical and social support to help them return to their studies, workplaces, and homes after treatment and carry on with the lives they had before.
Since last year, the hospital where I work has held a "Young Cancer Symposium." It brings together discussions not only on cancer treatment but also on the various issues young patients face, such as childbirth, returning to work, and mental health. To help young patients who have experienced cancer build healthy lifestyle habits and recover emotionally, we also formed the "MY HOPE" exercise crew. Watching crew members actively share their activities, such as running and hiking, on social media (SNS) and cheer one another's recovery, I was reminded anew that relationships which foster the strength to live again matter as much as cancer treatment itself.
Treating cancer in the young does not end with saving a life. Good cancer treatment is complete only when it helps patients go on pursuing their dreams, be with their families, and live as members of society. Helping young cancer patients maintain a stable life even after treatment is not the role of hospitals alone. What is needed is an effort by hospitals, local communities, and workplaces to build a tightly woven support system together.
