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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Here’s the truth: connection doesn’t always happen in person. Sometimes it happens through screens, across time zones, between people who’ve never met but understand each other instantly.
That’s the beauty of virtual support groups. They take the loneliness that so often shadows cancer, especially for young adults, and turn it into something softer, something shared. Whether you’re tuning in from a hospital bed, your couch, or a tiny apartment with a stubborn Wi-Fi signal, you can still find your people.
You don’t have to be in the same room to be in the same story.
Young adult cancer life is full of contradictions: you might look fine but feel awful, crave community but feel too tired to socialize, want to talk about cancer but not only talk about cancer. That’s where online groups shine.
Virtual spaces create accessibility: physically, emotionally, and financially. No commute. No awkward waiting rooms. No pressure to “look okay.” You can show up in your pajamas, with your camera off, or just listen until you’re ready to speak.
And the benefits are real. Research shows that online peer and support groups for cancer survivors improve mood, reduce isolation, and increase overall quality of life (Uchino, 2006; Spiegel & Classen, 2000).
You don’t need to have the perfect words or energy to join. You just need curiosity and maybe a little courage.
The following organizations offer online spaces where you can find understanding, humor, and friendship no matter what stage you’re in.
Weekly Zoom groups organized by diagnosis and stage, including metastatic and young-adult-specific meetups.
Designed for young adult survivors who are parenting small children. Programs include support groups, workshops, and community events.
A space for men moving forward after cancer, focusing on purpose, growth, and peer connection.
Free, 15-week virtual groups led by oncology social workers. Each group focuses on specific diagnoses, caregiver needs, or survivorship stages.
An active online discussion board connecting survivors and caregivers nationwide.
Offers free virtual support groups and YA-specific programs led by trained facilitators.
A social network connecting fighters, survivors, and caregivers through profiles, blogs, and forums organized by diagnosis and life stage.
Peer-led Facebook and online groups for breast cancer patients, including young adult and metastatic-specific communities.
Virtual support for children and teens (ages 6–18) whose parent or guardian has cancer — because kids need community too.
Peer-led nonprofit offering virtual support groups and navigation for breast and gynecologic cancers.
Virtual programs and groups dedicated to those living with triple-negative breast cancer.
Virtual and in-person programs for young adults, including navigation, fitness, and community gatherings.
Ongoing wellness and virtual support groups for young adult survivors and co-survivors, with fun and flexible formats.
Not every group will feel like home and that’s okay. The right one will. Here’s how to find it:
You can also reach out to your oncology social worker or Cactus Cancer’s team for suggestions. We love connecting folks with spaces where they’ll thrive.
Virtual support groups remind us that healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens in community, even if that community is built on screens and shared playlists.
If you’re ready to find your people, explore our Virtual Support Group Directory on the Cactus Cancer Society website. From young adult drop-ins to diagnosis-specific meetups, there’s a place waiting for you.
Because no matter where you are, your couch, your clinic, your car connection is still possible. And it just might change everything. 💛
