I'm Too Young to Have Breast Cancer!

This Year, Approximately 11,000 Women under age 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and close to 1,300 will die. For women in their twenties and thirties, being diagnosed with breast cancer is a vastly different experience than for their older counterparts. Despite their increasing numbers, young women with breast cancer often find themselves alone and with little information relevant to their age group. Most medical research has been done on post-menopausal women with breast cancer, most books on the subject are directed at middle-aged women, and support groups are often made up of retirees and grandmothers. Younger breast cancer survivors also tend to have less emotional and logistical support than older women. A twenty-four-year-old college graduate can't relate to "telling the grandchildren," just as that grandmother can't easily relate to the dating dilemmas of a struggling twenty-eight-year-old investment banker.

Beth Leibson-Hawkins is a freelance writer, editor, and researcher with extensive experience in magazine journalism and public policy research and analysis. She holds a master's degree in public policy from Duke University and a master of fine arts in creative writing from Emerson College. She lives in New York with her husband and two children