Eliza Wierzbinska was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at age 30.
Are you feeling worried about how you’ll balance medical treatment with your already busy work or school schedule? Are you concerned about how you’ll pay for treatment? Unsure about dating or starting a family while undergoing treatment? We get it!
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center understands that being diagnosed with cancer or blood disorder in your teens or early adulthood is especially challenging. The Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers (AYA) at MSK was founded to meet the specific needs of young people, ages 15 to 39.
MSK is especially able to help you because we treat and research cancers in both adults and children.
Adolescent and young adult cancer patients face an often-unique set of challenges and concerns related to their cancer treatment, for example:
- Understanding their medical treatment and their options or decisions.
- Keeping up with work or educational goals and responsibilities.
- Dealing with physical changes and side effects that can result from the cancer or its treatment.
- Having concerns about what to tell others or being treated differently by friends, coworkers, etc.
- Concerns around dating, marriage, or building a family.
- Facing financial uncertainty or insurance issues related to medical treatment.
- Having to become more reliant on parents, family or others or feeling alone and isolated in the process.
- Learning to take care of their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health under these trying circumstances.
Email Ayaprogram@mskcc.org or call 646-608-8336 for questions and inquiries.
