Improving Service for Young Adults

A young man takes hiss experience with lymphoma and uses it to help others:

"Kids were the furthest thought from Matt Lowney's mind when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at 24.

A recent graduate of Oregon State University, Lowney had settled into a new job in 2004 when doctors put him on aggressive chemotherapy. No one mentioned fertility concerns.

"When I was going through it, they didn't bring up the fact that you probably want to go to a fertility clinic and bank up some sperm," Lowney says.

A year later his cancer came back and Lowney transferred to a medical team at OHSU Hospital for chemotherapy, radiation and for a bone marrow transplant. Doctors warned him he was likely infertile.

"It never even occurred to me," says Lowney, to question the side effects of chemo. "And it wasn't in the literature that we were given."

Lowney, in remission now, has become an advocate for young adult cancer patients, typically between 15 and 40 and facing an entirely different set of concerns than children or older adults with cancer. "

Read More: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/11/adovcates_for_young_a...