After more than a decade of working with young adults impacted by cancer, certain themes show up again and again. The diagnoses vary. Treatment paths look different. Life circumstances shift. Each experience is as unique as our young adults. But the emotional and physical aftereffects many young adults describe are remarkably consistent. The research backs this up. Research on adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivorship highlights three of the most common long-term challenges: fatigue, fear of recurrence, and anxiety.
At Cactus Cancer Society, those same three themes come up in conversations and virtual groups with young adults across treatment, survivorship, metastatic disease, and long-term care. Here are some of the things we hear.
1. “I’m exhausted, and no one seems to get it.”
Cancer-related fatigue isn’t just feeling tired. It’s the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t reset with sleep and often doesn’t show up clearly in labs or scans.
For young adults, fatigue collides with work expectations, school, dating, parenting, and the pressure to “get back to normal.” Many people tell us they feel misunderstood when their energy doesn’t match what others expect. This is especially true in survivorship, where there may be a societal expectation to “be back to normal now.”
What we see again and again is that fatigue isn’t something people can simply push through. It requires support that is flexible, validating, and realistic for people trying to live full lives alongside cancer.
2. “What if I relapse?”
A second theme we see in our groups is around fear of recurrence. Fear of recurrence is one of the most widely documented psychological aftereffects of cancer, and for good reason. It’s not irrational. It’s rooted in lived experience, ongoing symptoms, and the uncertainty that often comes with living life inside of cancer.
For some young adults, that fear is consistent throughout treatment, for others, it surfaces years after treatment ends. For many, it remains part of daily life, especially for those living with metastatic or chronic cancer.
3. “My brain won’t turn off.”
Anxiety is another experience young adult cancer patients name again and again in our online spaces. It can show up as racing thoughts, hypervigilance about symptoms, difficulty sleeping, or a constant sense that something might be wrong. Anxiety around scans is so common that young adults have coined the term “scanxiety” to illustrate the pattern of anxiety that arrives around scans. Sometimes that anxiety is tied to scans or medical appointments. Sometimes it shows up in everyday life—at work, in relationships, or when planning for the future.
For many young adults, anxiety isn’t just about cancer itself. It’s about the ripple effects cancer creates in identity, relationships, finances, and long-term planning.
So We Built a CE Course Around It
The Art of Survivorship is an on-demand continuing education course designed for social workers and helping professionals who support young adult cancer patients and survivors.
The course centers on the three aftereffects that research and lived experience consistently highlight for young adults with cancer:
- Fatigue
- Fear of recurrence
- Anxiety
Rather than treating these as isolated symptoms, the course explores how they evolve across the cancer continuum and intersect with identity, access to care, culture, and life stage. We bring our experience in the creative coping space to help providers navigate these aftereffects and provide tools to young adults who might be saying, “I’m not sure what to say.” For many cancer survivors, their experiences can be hard to articulate. Creative coping and therapeutic art offer another way in. These practical tools offer regulation, expression, and meaning-making when words fall short.
Over seven and a half hours, participants learn through:
- Oncology social worker–led education
- Survivor-led panels that center lived experience
- Demonstrations of creative coping tools that can realistically fit into clinical and community settings
If This Sounds Familiar
If you work with young adult cancer patients and have ever thought:
- “I see this all the time, but I’m not sure how to support them.”
- “I wish I had more tools for this.”
- “How do I help my clients use these tools outside of session?”
You’re not alone. And this course was built with you in mind! Register using the link below or share with a social worker who is looking to learn more about navigating these after effects with their patients.
