This entry was written by Bianca, a Now What member from QLD, for the ABC's Heywire competition.It was chosen as the regional winner for 2009.

Everyone, at some point in their life, will experience change. For some it will come in the form of a new career or relocating where you live. It will see us leaving behind our old routines to pick up a whole new set. For some of us this change has come in the form of a very scary life-altering cancer diagnosis at a young age.

For myself and many other young adults it means saying goodbye to our regular friends and day to day studying and part-time jobs, to take on a whole new set of responsibilities which include daily scans and blood tests, biopsies and doses and doses of chemo and radiation. It’s a full-time job which no-one signs up for and very few survive.

My name is Bianca and I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma just weeks before my 21st birthday. I was told I had a tumour, the size of a rockmelon, occupying my chest area and affecting some of my major organs. Being diagnosed for me meant there was no more worrying about what I was going to wear out on Saturday night, or what results I’d gotten for my law exams. My new life instead carried with it constant worries such as whether I’d ever be able to conceive my own child in the future, or even worse, whether I would live long enough to even try.

For most people, the idea of what is really involved in cancer treatments will probably never cross their minds. And I mean the real in-depth details that the movies all forget to mention. Yes, cancer patients are likely to lose their hair as it is one of the many side effects of the concoction of drugs used in chemotherapy regimes.

On top of this however, we also suffer months and months of debilitating pain, deadly infections and nausea, and are often confined to hospital beds for months on end. Needless to say that for myself and other young people going through the same experience, it is a lot to cope with ourselves and for our families also as they watch on helplessly.

One of the less spoken about yet increasing side effects among young cancer patients is depression and mental well-being. It’s a time in our lives when we’re figuring out who we are and what we’re doing with our lives. For me it was also a tough time in terms of figuring out my sexuality and coming out to my parents. On top of all this however, for cancer patients it’s also a day to day battle to want to fight for your survival. The cancer was taking another integral part of me away – my will to live.

Spending my hospital days surrounded by the elderly and the dying made my cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment even that much harder. As a twenty year old, I was far too old to be placed in a ward with young children, yet incapable of dealing with my own struggles when sharing a ward and bathroom, as I often did, with three different men in their 80s. And whilst my family and the doctors would comfort me with the statistics related to positive responses to chemo, it couldn’t be denied that what I was noticing daily was the exact opposite. I was living among the dying and it scared me.

The system for dealing with young adults in cancer wards at the moment is simple, once they turn 16 they are adults in most aspects of the real world and therefore will share with other adults going through the same experience. The only difference is when it comes to dealing with being diagnosed with cancer, young adults deal with it on a very different level.

For the first time in our very short-lived lives, we’re thinking about our own mortality on a day to day basis. Somehow in the scheme of things, it doesn’t seem right to be picturing this before you even consider things like graduation, marriage and children or even getting a full time job. Many of us are still living at home and play silly childish games with our brothers and sisters. In my opinion I think it’s pretty much fair to say that when it comes to being diagnosed with cancer, we’re not adults in the sense of the word.

I’ve often thought about if it was one of my younger brothers or sisters that were diagnosed at the age of 20, what type of treatment I would hope for them. I can say quite confidently that I wouldn’t want it to be anything like my experience. My hopes for the future, with the help of Canteen, are to ensure that no young person should suffer through their cancer journey the way myself and many other young cancer patients have in the past.

And this can be accomplished through the creation of young adult wards. If we can make their journey that little bit less painful, it can make all the difference to their mental and physical process of recovery. And until we find a cure, the least we can hope for is a better hospital experience for the patients and their families.

As for my own journey, I can now officially say that I am in remission and the cancer is no longer in my body. And although my journey will never truly be over, I am now able to resume my study and start living the life of a normal 21 year old.