Just watched a Nightline report about young adults with cancer. They talked about the fact that cancer survival rates have skyrocketed for the 5-14 and 40+ age groups but that for the 15-39 age group, rates have stayed the same or gotten slightly worse in the last 30 years. It all makes sense when you understand that the problem of cancer in young adults is the diagnosis. We habitually delay treatment for ailments we figure are sports-related (body pain) or pregnancy related or in my case allergy related. We delay getting help because we figure it is anything other than something really serious and our family doctors don't help any because they misdiagnose us in the same way and wait-and-see us to fricken death. Literally. This is what Nightline had to say and since it pretty much gels with my own experience I tend to believe it. 15-39 year-olds have a stagnant survival rate because the cancer is so damned advanced in a lot of cases before it is even detected.

I am lucky that my 10-month chronic cough didn't translate into stage 4 lymphoma instead of stage 2. There are many, it seems, who aren't so lucky.