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Cancer 'always in the back of my mind' for 3-time survivor
by Elizabeth Landau
July 14 |
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Jasan Zimmerman remembers running into his room, burying his head under a pillow and saying he didn't want to die. His mother chased after him and told him, "I'm not going to let you die."
He was 15, and his parents had just told him that he had his second case of cancer, which was most likely caused by radiation from treating the first.
Zimmerman, now a 34-year-old molecular biologist in Palo Alto, California, has had three instances of cancer: a neuroblastoma on the neck at 6 months old, thyroid cancer at 15 and a recurrence of thyroid cancer at 21. He has been healthy since then, but he hasn't stopped worrying about getting sick again.
"It's always in the back of my mind; it kind of depends what brings it to the forefront," he said. "I had a bruise on my leg, and I didn't know where it came from, and I was worried that it was some kind of blood cancer. Little things like that kind of hit me."
A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that survivors of childhood cancer are at increased risk of dying of second cancers and circulatory diseases 25 years or more after their diagnosis.
Researchers, led by Raoul Reulen at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, looked at data from the British Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. It includes nearly 18,000 five-year survivors of cancer who received diagnoses between 1940 and 1991, before age 15. Study authors followed them until the end of 2006.
People who died 45 years or more after diagnosis were also more likely to have died from second primary cancers -- in other words, not a recurrence of the first cancer but a different kind -- and circulatory problems.
It took Zimmerman more than 25 years before he wanted to publicly talk about having cancer; now, he volunteers with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. He participates in advocacy events and shares his story so that others can be aware of what childhood and young adult cancer survivors go through, and the importance of psychosocial support.
Do you have an inspirational story that you would like to share with the YourCause.com team? Write us at info@yourcause.com.
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