Life After Cancer: The Lasting Impact of Cancer on Young Survivors

When my daughter was 27, the world was her oyster. She was looking at future career growth, adventure and opportunity, and all the madcap fun things that typical twenty-something young women think about, like last-minute road trips to cliff jump into a lake…literally.

Enter cancer.

It’s never a welcome thing to sit in a doctor’s office and be told you have cancer. Once you hear those words, there is a division in your life, an almost visible line that becomes the Before and the After. At my age, I am already living with some of the limitations that an older body naturally experiences, so the side effects of treatment, from surgeries to chemo to radiation, would be difficult to manage. But I have already adapted to changing my choices because my body says no. For my daughter, those adaptations took a lot more getting used to.

The Physical Challenges That Remain After Treatment

Surgery left her with scars, and the lymphedema that came from it means she has to choose whether she can do things because they might trigger swelling in her arm. Her left arm. Her dominant-hand arm. We worked very hard to make sure she had full range of motion after the operation, but the limitations are still there due to some restrictive scarring.

She knows she needs life insurance because, with a young family and the high risk of recurrence or new cancer developing from some of her treatment, she wants them to be taken care of. Most twenty- or thirty-somethings would breeze through the application and be approved for a low monthly payment. It is a lot harder to even find a company that will cover you, let alone for a reasonable monthly payment, when you’re a cancer survivor.

The Unexpected Effects of Cancer Treatment

My daughter’s cancer was hormone receptor positive, which means that to prevent recurrence, she had to take medication that put her into medically induced menopause. At 28 years old.

Side effects like brain fog made it difficult to concentrate at work. Insomnia meant morning meetings were often a no-go, so she had to ask for them to be held later. Intimacy became a challenge, with all kinds of added components that took a lot of the romance away. She had to regularly take pregnancy tests in case her reproductive system had magically kicked into gear and the added protection she was using had failed, and she would have faced some tough decisions had one been positive.

No madcap fun there.

Life After Cancer Still Requires Adaptation

Even though cancer is so many years in her rearview mirror, planning where she wants to live has to include being near enough to a major cancer center that she could quickly tap into testing and treatment if a recurrence or new cancer happened. She didn’t necessarily ever want to live in a more rural setting, but her spouse did, and they both have to adapt to the reality that doing so can never be a choice for them.

My girl’s body betrayed her in ways it’s hard to imagine, and now so many aspects of her life have to be thought through and actioned in reflection of her having had cancer at 27.

Adapting to new circumstances is a part of life, I know. It happens to everyone. But for young cancer survivors, they are living a life adapted every single day in ways I wish they didn’t have to.

Cancer sucks.

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