Feeling overwhelmed, different and alone...

KERI: I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of twenty-nine, in 1991. I had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation. There were so many things that I wanted to do with my life. I felt they were about to happen when all of a sudden everything was put on hold, or was gone. This wasn't what was supposed to be happening to me, I was way too young. I was newly married and we were planning to start a family. All my plans were gone. My lifetime goal came down to just making it to my thirtieth birthday.

BRANDON: I was twenty-eight when I was diagnosed with cancer. IT was like somebody threw a wall in front of me. Everything just stopped; work, my whole life. I had my life goals set, but suddenly I didn't know what I was going to do. I was stuck. And I had a wife and a baby. What was going to happen to them?

BRENDA: I'm thirty-two, and it feels like cancer's eating my world, that I don't exist outside of cancer.

PATTY: I was twenty-seven when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was scary, and no one I knew had any idea what I was going through. You can't just call up somebody and say "Gee, I'm feeling rotten because I had chemo today." They have no idea what you're talking about. I went to a concert when I still had the drainage under my arm from my lumpectomy. I thought I was the only person in the world that had cancer. With thousands and thousands of people around me, I felt absolutely alone.

AMY: I was twenty-six when I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. It was very difficult because I was going to school when it happened. Having to go through surgery and chemotherapy messed up studying, not to mention trying to pay the medical bills with a part-time job.

KERI: I was newly married, living in a home of my own. Suddenly, people were asking if they could come over and do my dishes or laundry, because I couldn't. It became very important to me to be able to just get through the everyday little things, to prove that I was still my own person.

ADAM: It's hard to know in the beginning whether it's going to be just an interruption in the flow of life, or if it's going to take a long time to get over it. Even as you're going through it, you don't really know which is the case, because cancer's pretty unpredictable.

REGGIE: I was working in construction, making good money. My wife was working in banking. I was in the middle of remodeling my home, as well as quite a few other people's homes. All of a sudden I couldn't work and the money stopped. Bam! Luckily, I didn't have to move in with my parents. We were pretty fortunate that I had health and disability insurance, plus my wife's income. But it was hard. We're still paying off bills from my bone marrow transplant and other cancer treatments. It's hard.

KYLE: I always have it in the back of my mind. My doctor told me that he wanted to follow me all the way through college, through my marriage, and later. It's like it's never going to leave me. It scares me. I had some bloody noses recently, so we want to get tests to make sure that everything's still OK. Is it ever going to end?

ASHLEY: My friend has leukemia, is going through treatment, and may need a bone marrow transplant. We've just finished high school and I'm starting college in a few weeks. I'm having a hard enough time dealing with all of the good things that are thankfully happening in my life, compared to all the stuff that's going on with her. I want to be able to support her, but I can't relate to everything she's going through, to haw different she looks and acts since she's been sick. I don't want to sound selfish, but I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to be there for her like I used to be. I don't know anyone who had cancer except some older people, and they died.

HALINA (therapist): Young people usually don't know anyone else their age who is going through the same experience as they are. And cancer really interrupts and disrupts life at the very moment when the young person is beginning to consolidate an identity as an adult. He or she may be just finding a place in society, in a relationship, in a career. It's a different experience than it is for those who are winding down, who have already had careers and raised families, who have had opportunities to actualize some of their dreams and have a life. A life-threatening illness is out of place in young adult lives because it comes at an age when they should be making plans for the future. Young people don't tend to think about mortality, and don't start thinking about it until much, much later in life. And since it's still relatively rare for young people to face death, there is much less of a community of peers to connect with, to identify with. Somebody in their fifties, sixties, or seventies, on the other hand, wouldn't have as much difficulty seeking out other people their age who have cancer.