Welcome to Planet Cancer, a community of young adults with cancer. (You know, that age between "pediatric" and "geriatric," where no one knows whether to give you a lollipop or have a serious talk about your fiber intake.) It's a place to share insights, explore our fears, laugh, or even give the finger to cancer with others who just plain get it. We don't deny the dark side of illness and death here. But we also firmly believe that laughter and light can turn up in the strangest places.

Planet Cancer was founded by young adults in their twenties; either in the midst of or barely out of treatment for cancer. Not only had they endured the incredible indignity of a cancer diagnosis in what should have been the best years of health, they had also all suffered from an immense void in services and support for young cancer patients. The majority of the other patients they encountered were separated by mental, emotional and physical lifetimes. As young adults with cancer, they felt that they had fallen through the cracks, and they wanted to reach out to others having the same experience.

Every year, nearly 70,000 young adults between 18 and 40 will be diagnosed with cancer in the U.S., representing nearly 7% of all cancer diagnoses. The young adults served by Planet Cancer are marginalized in a medical infrastructure that does not have a "home" for them, lacking specific resources geared toward their unique needs and issues. Survival rates for this age group have not improved in over 30 years, yet the medical community still doesn't recognize young adults as a specific group in need of unique medical, emotional, and psychosocial tools.

Planet Cancer provides a critical community of peer support and advocacy for young adults with cancer.

We're here to connect young adults with each other, to empower them and to help them access support and resources they wouldn't have known about otherwise. We're also here to raise our voices in the medical and research communities on behalf of young adults; to say: Young adults DO get cancer. We DO have unique needs. Our survival rates are NOT improving. Don't let us fall through the cracks for ONE MORE MINUTE.

Planet Cancer is a LIVESTRONG Initiative.