Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month
First job, first date, first day at college. Being a teenager or young adult is full of firsts. An opportunity to forge your own path, to make your own decisions and figure out who you really are. But then cancer comes along.
Cancer takes a lot. But when you’re a teenager or young adult, it can feel like it takes your voice and your independence too. Just being heard and feeling empowered can feel like hard work.
This Teenager and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month, let’s raise voices and share experiences. Let’s empower those who deserve to feel heard. Together with cancer charities across the UK, we’ll be handing over the mic to teenagers and young people this April.
Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month
First job, first date, first day at college. Being a teenager or young adult is full of firsts. An opportunity to forge your own path, to make your own decisions and figure out who you really are. But then cancer comes along.
Cancer takes a lot. But when you’re a teenager or young adult, it can feel like it takes your voice and your independence too. Just being heard and feeling empowered can feel like hard work.
This Teenager and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month, let’s raise voices and share experiences. Let’s empower those who deserve to feel heard. Together with cancer charities across the UK, we’ll be handing over the mic to teenagers and young people this April.
Let's amplify the voices of young people
Young Lives vs Cancer Specialist Social Workers are there for every young person with cancer, to make sure they get the right care and support at the right time. To make sure voices are heard, and unique needs are understood. To make sure every young person still feels empowered; independent.
Specialist social workers who understand what young people with cancer are really going through. A familiar voice when they’re surrounded by strangers. Someone who can make sure they have the space to feel in control. To feel seen and heard.
But it’s time that teenagers and young adults with cancer are seen and heard by everybody.
Help us amplify their voices by following us on social media this Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
Over 50 percent of those diagnosed with cancer as a teenager or young adult say they need help dealing with their sadness, anger and frustration.
Two Thirds report needing to feel like a normal young person again, which they lost because of their cancer.
Over 50 percent of those diagnosed with cancer as a teenager or young adult say they need to spend more time with friends.
Read the stories and experiences of young people with cancer
Josh’s story: I was starting a new chapter of my life, then I found out I had cancer
Josh had just moved to London to start a graduate job at a national newspaper when he noticed a lump on the side of his neck. Josh didn’t have any other symptoms so didn’t think it was anything to worry about but after a while went to see a doctor who thought it was a swollen saliva gland and suggested he get it scanned. He went to urgent care a while later where they thought it might be tonsilitis and put him on antibiotics. When the antibiotics didn’t help, Josh went back to the doctors and this time they did an ultrasound and he was later transferred for a biopsy and PET scan which confirmed he had lymphoma.