This is our third video in our Ask a Cactus Series on Guys and Young Adult Cancer. Hear from Kyle, Bryan, and other contributors via their comments! In this video, they’ll talk about finding community, misunderstandings about the guys cancer experience, and more.
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How spending time with art can spark curiosity, connection, and creative coping through young adult cancer.
Continue readingThis is our second video in our Ask a Cactus Series on Guys and Young Adult Cancer. Hear from Kyle, Bryan, and other contributors via their comments! In this video, they’ll talk about how to support guys during their cancer experience in a way that is genuinely accessible and assistive.
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Whether you’re facing down a new diagnosis, navigating life after treatment, or showing up day after day for someone you love—you don’t have to do it alone.
This year, YA Cancer Gabfest 2026 is all about Ground Control to Young Adults: Your Mission to Connection, Healing, and Growth. From December 7–11, we’re bringing together young adult cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, and the professionals who support them—for a week of connection, conversation, and real-world survivorship wisdom.
You’ll find interactive sessions, crash courses, and heartfelt stories from across the YA cancer community—all designed to help you navigate the twists and turns of cancer together.
Because whether you’re the one in the chair, the one holding the clipboard, or the one holding a hand—you’re part of this story. And your voice matters.
Join us. Let’s build the kind of support we all wish existed—stronger, louder, and together.
This is our first video in our Ask a Cactus Series: Guys Edition. Please meet Bryan and Kyle! They are guys in our Cactus Cancer Society community and here to answer a range of questions you may have about the experience guys have in the young adult cancer space. If you’re a guy looking for a sense of “I feel that way, too,” a caregiver to a guy with cancer, or anyone else – they’re here to bring you the truth of their experiences.
Check out this video to meet our experts, Bryan and Kyle!
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It’s September! The start of the school year is here and that means it’s time for kids to learn, but what about adults? We don’t have any curriculum or teachers to teach us, we’re adults – we need to teach ourselves. However, how do we figure out what we should learn or what we even want to learn? One thing to do is think about school – what did you like? Did you like Math? English? History? Science? Maybe art, gym, health, or one of those other “specials” in school (At least that is what those subjects were called when I was in school)? We all liked at least something at one point – what was yours?
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As a young adult cancer survivor, I remember how quickly treatment started moving and how much information I was expected to absorb along the way. There were appointments, new medical terms, treatment decisions, and a parade of acronyms, all arriving while I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I had cancer at 30.
If you have ever left an oncology appointment wondering what just happened, what half of those words meant, or whether you were supposed to have an opinion about the plan, I promise you are in very good company.
Young adults are often making cancer decisions while also thinking about fertility, work, school, finances, relationships, mental health, and plans for the future. Those parts of our lives do not become less important when cancer enters the picture. They often become even more important.
You deserve to understand your options and have a meaningful voice in what happens next. That is where shared decision-making comes in.
The National Cancer Institute defines shared decision-making as a process in which a patient and health care professional work together to decide on the best plan of care.
Your care team brings medical knowledge, clinical experience, and information about the potential benefits and risks of each option. You bring knowledge about your own life. You know what matters to you, how your body is feeling, what you are worried about, which side effects feel manageable, and what you need treatment to make room for.
Shared decision-making means receiving information in language you can understand, having time to ask questions, and being treated as an active participant in your care. You can ask your provider to explain something again, write it down, discuss another option, or take time to think. You can bring someone you trust to an appointment or request a second opinion.
This kind of partnership can be especially helpful when your care team is considering whether additional testing could provide useful information about your cancer. Biomarker testing is one example of a decision you may want to discuss together. It may offer clues about your cancer and possible treatment options, but whether testing is useful depends on factors such as your cancer type, stage, and treatment history. Your goals and priorities can then help guide the decisions that follow.
Biomarkers are genes, proteins, gene changes, or other substances that can provide information about a cancer. They may help your care team better understand your cancer’s subtype, how it behaves, or whether it is likely to respond to a particular treatment.
You may hear biomarker testing called molecular testing, tumor profiling, somatic testing, genomic testing, or genetic testing of the tumor. Depending on your cancer and the purpose of the test, a laboratory may examine tumor tissue collected during a biopsy or surgery, blood, or another bodily fluid.
Examples of biomarkers include HER2 in breast, stomach, and some lung cancers; EGFR and ALK in lung cancer; tumor changes involving BRCA1 and BRCA2 in several cancer types; KRAS in colorectal, lung, and pancreatic cancers; and IDH in gliomas.
Biomarker testing may help identify a targeted therapy or immunotherapy, rule out treatments that are unlikely to help, clarify information about your cancer, or determine whether you may qualify for a clinical trial.
It is also important to understand the limits of biomarker testing. Its usefulness depends on your cancer type, stage, treatment history, and the biomarkers researchers currently understand. Testing may identify a treatment option, provide information that doesn’t change the current plan, or produce an uncertain result. A biomarker result can be important information without providing every answer.
If biomarker testing may be relevant to your cancer, ask your care team how it could inform your treatment options. You can also ask what the test examines, what sample is needed, how long results may take, what it may cost, and whether waiting for results could delay treatment. When the report is available, ask your oncologist to explain what it means for your care.
Questions to consider:
You do not have to ask everything at once. Choose the questions that matter most, and bring a support person to take notes if helpful.
At Cactus Cancer Society, we create spaces where young adults can talk honestly about what cancer care is actually like. We want to know how conversations about shared decision-making and biomarkers felt from your side of the exam room.
What did you understand? What felt confusing? What do you wish someone had explained differently? What helped you feel heard?
These questions will be part of our next four-week Creative Arts Book Club, Hue’s in the Moment?
Together, we’ll work through Into the Moment: A Journal and Coloring Book to Inspire Mindful Creativity by Dani DiPirro. Each online session will include coloring, journaling, grounding activities, creative connection, and good conversation with fellow young adult cancer patients, survivors, and thrivers.
During the final 30 minutes of each session, we’ll hold a compensated focus group about shared decision-making and biomarker education in young adult oncology. You do not need to have a particular biomarker, receive biomarker testing, or arrive with expert knowledge. We want to learn from a wide range of young adult cancer experiences.
As both a young adult cancer survivor and a clinician, I know these conversations can bring us back to decisions, questions, and moments that felt deeply personal, confusing, or vulnerable. I am sincerely grateful to everyone willing to share those experiences. Your perspective matters, and we will treat it with the care it deserves.
Who: Young adult cancer patients, survivors, and thrivers ages 18–45
When: Tuesdays, September 15, September 22, September 29, and October 6
Time: 5–7 p.m. PT / 6–8 p.m. MT / 7–9 p.m. CT / 8–10 p.m. ET
Where: Online via Zoom
Compensation: A $10 Amazon gift card for each focus group session attended, with $50 total for participating in all four sessions, plus a free copy of Into the Moment
REGISTER FOR HUE’S IN THE MOMENT
This season of Creative Arts Book Club is sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo (DSI), a pharmaceutical company focused on oncology. Focus group feedback will be shared with DSI in de-identified form, which means participants’ names and identifying information will not be included.
This information is intended for educational purposes and is not a substitute for personalized guidance from your health care team. Whether biomarker testing is appropriate depends on your individual diagnosis, treatment history, and circumstances.
Welcome to August, that classic time for families to go on vacations before the school year starts. What vacations did you take as a kid? Was your family a vacation family or the kind of family that did whatever you could around the house to make summers a bit more fun?
Continue readingThis is a double issue of Cody’s Corner! Cactus Cancer Society takes July off, so you will get double the Cody in this post! Welcome to June, the month with the longest day of the year!
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There’s a special kind of relief that comes from talking to someone who just gets it. No explaining, no softening, no apologizing for the hard stuff, just instant understanding.
That’s what peer connection is all about. When you’ve gone through cancer, even your most loving friends might not fully understand what it’s like to live in this new reality. The fatigue, the fear, the weird sense of being both “lucky” and “lost.” But another survivor? They know.
Peer support doesn’t erase the hard parts, but it makes them lighter to carry. It turns isolation into connection and sometimes, connection into healing.
For me, connecting to peers with blood cancer made all the difference in my mental health. It started online and eventually I gained a group of friends I’ve met IRL and keep in touch with each week.
The science backs up what you may already know: connection is medicine. Studies show that cancer survivors who engage in peer or group support report lower distress, higher quality of life, and greater sense of meaning (Spiegel & Classen, 2000; Uchino, 2006).
For young adults, that connection is even more critical. You’re navigating identity, relationships, and the future all while processing an experience that most people your age can’t relate to. Peer mentorship creates a bridge between “I’m the only one” and “I’m not alone.”
And peer doesn’t just mean patient. Caregivers, co-survivors, and loved ones benefit, too. When you can talk to someone who’s been there whether that’s about scanxiety, intimacy, returning to work, or just existing in a changed body, something inside you exhales.
These are some compassionate peer connection programs for young adults and their loved ones:
Connects young adults with blood cancer to trained peer mentors who understand the journey firsthand.
Matches patients, survivors, and caregivers navigating brain tumors with trained mentors through the American Brain Tumor Association.
Free and confidential 1:1 peer support for anyone impacted by cancer. Mentors are trained survivors and caregivers who’ve been through it.
Professional-led programs that offer both group support and peer matching for patients and caregivers.
Pairs newly diagnosed patients or caregivers with trained “buddy” mentors who share lived experience.
A unique program that connects young adults with mentors in their career field during or after treatment — helping them rebuild purpose and future goals.
Peer navigation for individuals with hereditary cancers, including breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate.
Global 1:1 peer support for patients, survivors, and caregivers. Matches are made by diagnosis, age, and experience for the best fit.
Matches people living with lung cancer to volunteer mentors who’ve faced similar challenges.
Connects newly diagnosed neuroendocrine tumor patients with mentors who share lived experience.
Peer mentor program for young adults with breast cancer, pairing them with survivors who offer guidance and encouragement.
Offers peer connections, local meetups, and online communities for young adults affected by breast cancer.
Peer mentors and support groups for those impacted by prostate cancer.
You don’t have to show up with the right words — just honesty. Here are a few ways to make peer connection meaningful:
Peer support is proof that healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens in community. Every story shared, every “me too,” every text exchanged at midnight builds a little more light into the dark corners of survivorship.
If you’re ready to find someone who’s walked a similar path, explore our Peer Connection & Mentorship Directory to find programs that match your diagnosis, age, and needs.
Because sometimes the best medicine is another human saying, “I’ve been there and you’re going to be okay.” 💛
