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10
HealtHy life: CanCer
August 29-30, 2012
By KARA HANSEN MURPHEY
Pamplin Media Group
Grant Roesler was 18 years old and pre-
paring to embark on his first year of col-
lege when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Instead of heading off to school like his
peers, he spent what would have been his
first semester undergoing chemotherapy.
The experience gave him a new perspec-
tive on life and a clear lens into a major gap
in services for cancer patients: Treatment
and support programs often don’t meet the
needs of young adults suffering from the dis-
ease.
But that has been changing over the past
few years. Today, Portland-area hospitals and
nonprofit organizations are working to im-
prove social services and overall care for
young adults like Roesler, who helped start a
nonprofit called Oncology Youth Connection.
Each year, about 70,000 adolescents and
young adults — defined as those between the
ages of 15 and 39 — are diagnosed with can-
cer, according to the National Cancer Insti-
tute.
While the chances of survival have greatly
improved for younger and older population
groups, adolescents and young adults haven’t
made the same progress. About five years
ago, the medical community came together to
try to understand the trend.
“Over the past 30 years, we’ve seen sur-
vival rates increase. Treatments are getting
better, we’re delivering care more effectively
and more efficiently, people are living longer
— except these adolescents and young adults
in this middle age range, where we’ve seen
no improvement,” said Dr. Rebecca Block, a
researcher who works in the Adolescent and
Young Adult Oncology program at OHSU’s
Knight Cancer Institute.
“We have this flatline
with the middle age rang-
es.
“The million dollar
question is ‘why?’ One
thing we know is it’s not
one problem.”
Block said recent re-
search suggests cancer
behaves differently in the
bodies of adolescents
than it does for pediatric
or elderly patients.
Many other factors are likely psychosocial
in nature. Often, young adult patients are un-
derinsured or not insured at all, she said.
That means they might not go to the doctor
for preventive or routine care, and so they
might be diagnosed with cancer at a later
stage. And if they do go to the doctor, he or
she is less likely to think cancer is causing
their symptoms. Researchers are also look-
ing at delivery of care as an issue for young
adults.
“I think the biggest issue and the thing we
sort of lose track of is how critical this time
period is developmentally, and how we have
to look at diagnosis and treatment from a de-
velopmental perspective, because everything
else is riding on that,”
Block said. “If you think
about what a typical teen-
ager or young adult is do-
ing or would be doing,
and then look at what a
young person who has
been diagnosed with can-
cer is thinking about, you
can clearly see the chal-
lenges that lie ahead.”
Instead of getting a
driver’s license, going to
prom or graduating from
high school, teenagers with cancer might be
dealing with treatment necessary to save
their lives while at the same time considering
issues like fertility — even if they’ve never
before considered whether they want to have
children when they’re older. Meanwhile,
Block said, “You’re wondering if you’re going
to live through your bone marrow trans-
plant.”
At the same time, she said, “A lot of our
younger survivors talk about how the things
that are really important to their friends just
don’t matter to them anymore. ... Everyone is
worried about what their hair looks like, and
they don’t have any hair. You can see how
that leaves them isolated socially.”
Similarly, someone in their 20s or 30s might
feel like they’re “slipping back” if they need
to move back in with their parents. They also
might come out of the experience with differ-
ent expectations for relationships.
“There’s this strange wisdom that you gain
by facing your own mortality as a young
adult,” Block sad.
Roesler, who survived non-Hodgkin lym-
phoma, helped found Oncology Youth Con-
nection, or OYC, to prevent some of the isola-
tion young adults with cancer experience.
Run entirely by volunteers, the organiza-
tion provides young cancer patients and sur-
vivors with a community of peers who social-
ize and work together on service and educa-
tional activities. It holds fundraising events
throughout the year, works to raise aware-
ness and regularly plans small and large
gatherings. The organization also offers
grants to cancer survivors to use on pursuits
they’re passionate about.
Roesler said his goal is to provide a place
for face-to-face interaction and ac-
tivities that are natural for young
people to engage in.
“Here are people who have been
there so they understand it, and
they understand you just need to
vent about some stuff sometimes,”
he said. “At the same time, maybe
you don’t need a typical support
group.”
The group is also helpful for co-
patients or co-survivors — people
who have had a personal cancer
experience through someone
they’re close to.
Chasity Glass recently wrote a
book chronicling her relationship
with her late husband, Anthony,
who was diagnosed with colon can-
cer a year before they married.
“He was so young,” she said,
“there was no doubt” he’d survive.
But the disease kept coming. “It
felt like we were constantly chas-
ing after the latest result or scan.
We could never catch up.”
He died the day after they mar-
ried.
When he was going through
treatment, he struggled to find
peers who could relate to that
part of his life. He kept a blog
about what he was going through,
but he didn’t have face-to-face
connections like those provided
by OYC.
“There really wasn’t anything out there,
certainly not for young adults,” said Glass,
who then lived in California but has since
moved to Portland.
The one program they found was a sup-
port group for people who discussed con-
fronting death and preparing for it, and co-
patients weren’t allowed to attend.
She describes her new memoir, “even if i
am.” as a love story.
“It’s truly about loving someone with can-
cer and through cancer, and what it means
to ... not be able to fight the fight for them,”
she said.
In a sense, that experience led to a new
love story for Glass. She moved to Portland
and discovered OYC, which is open to can-
cer patients, co-patients and survivors
alike. That’s how she met Roesler. The two
recently married.
“It’s a hard thing to face at an age when
you should be buying your first home and
planning your wedding and all of a sudden
your life takes this horrible turn,” she said.
“I had such a dark idea of what cancer was,
and I’d gone through such a hard thing, I
needed to meet people who had made it and
see what they were doing with their lives.”
For young adults, a different
battle
■
Diagnosis with cancer presents distinct issues for adolescents and young
adults
“It’s a hard thing to face at an
age when you should be buying
your first home and planning
your wedding and all of a
sudden your life takes this
horrible turn.”
— Chasity Glass
PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP PHOTO: VERN UYETAKE
Chasity Glass looks over her book, “even if i am,” with her husband, Grant Roesler, in their Southwest Portland
home. The book, which comes out this September, is a memoir chronicling the experiences of Glass and her late
husband, Anthony, who died six years ago of colon cancer.