To be alarmed at how many younger people are dying of cancer

[Onthelastsplash]

People who aren't anywhere near elderly. I'm 31 and was scrolling through Facebook earlier, thinking I could name almost 10 people whose parent had died from cancer in the past few years. In 99% of cases, the parents were under 65.
My aunt died from cancer when I was 15 and she was approx early 50s.
Deborah James' story is so heartbreaking.
Sarah Harding was such a tragic loss.

Does anybody else feel slightly scared of how common cancer deaths seem to be in younger/middle aged people? Has it increased in recent years? Survival rates are supposed to have increased a lot in the last few decades, for the most part.

Well, I agree to an extent but, there are people who I’ve only known have died because of Facebook. Before that they would have died of cancer but I wouldn’t have known.

Yes I’ve been thinking this a lot lately.

Its not just younger people
The NHS is a dysfuctional shitshow.

My DH (55) is on his 3 cancer diagnosis since 2019. They stopped any face to face treatment in March 2020 (3 weeks after last cancer treatment) due to cv19

Guess what- the cancer is back. No surprise.

In August 2020 I said to the consultant who was working from home that it was very hard to see a tumour during a telephone consultation and he laughed!

True, and there will likely be even more whose family haven't posted about it online.
Also had an uncle, my Godmother, and a friend's Mum who've all had cancer but fortunately now free of it.
I don't know what the answer is

I think it seems a lot because we are lucky enough to live in a place and time where people don’t generally die young. It makes it more shocking when it does happen and, other than accidents/ crime/ suicide, it tends to be from cancer. I think it’s more to do with perspective than an increase in deaths from cancer.

I'm sorry about your husband :( wishing all the best.

I thought this as well.

My uncle was taken to hospital as he turned yellow one day in November. By the 11th they knew it was Pancreatic cancer. They said it was treatable and booked him in for a procedure can't remember what it's called.
They kept cancelling his appointments this went on for months by February it was Terminal and spread he started chemo only in April and they can't do no more. He's now sleeping for long periods of the day.

I believe if the hospital had acted quicker he would of had a better chance, instead they done nothing but mess him around. He's 61.

The answer is:
Train more doctors
Prioritise cancer rather than general referral rates (so not have a system where seeing a cancer the same clear up rate as a bunion)
get a better It system in the NHS

get some consultants who actually care. My Dh has seen 5 and only 1 has actually given a shit or seemed to like their job- the rest have been apathetic beyond belief

I can only agree. Both DH and I have cancer -different ones -and we are 50. Both our cancers returned in less than a year. We are both super-fit, slim, non-smokers and vegetarian. I know several people who got cancer in their 30s or even younger.

I wondered about this

both my sisters in law have cancer , mid 40s, both stage 4 so this is really hard

3 old Uni friends have cancer now

i thought (and think) it is just the age I am now. This is the age when shit really starts to happen, as also have friends with heart problems, stroke, kidney failure, divorces, psychosis, alcoholism … life seems very precarious once you get to around 50

The govt chose covid

🤷‍♀️

After my mother died of bowel cancer, I remember what my boss at the time said to me, which was that everybody dies of something, and they can cure just about everything else now, so that's why more people seem to die of cancer these days.

Regional NHS chose how to respond

Stopping cancer treatment was a scandal
More people will die over the next 5 years due to NHS failings during pandemic than died from from covid

This. I lost DH to bile duct cancer because the powers that be chose covid.

(@VanillaIce1 A whipple's procedure? So sorry to hear about your uncle )

Sorry for all those going through/lost somebody to cancer.

It has increased a bit but actually it is still pretty low amount of younger people getting cancer. It is mainly a disease of age but of course not always.

www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/incidence/age#heading-Three

My beautiful cousin recently died of cancer- he was 48. I still can't make head nor tail of it, it's just so cruel.

Both my parents died from cancer in their late 60s, my FIL in his 50s, my aunt in her 40s.

I’ve just been referred on a 2ww, GP says 99% sure I have cancer but just isn’t 100% sure what type. Only skin cancer, I’ve been digging it out repeatedly with a potato knife for five years but it keeps coming back! My two weeks is up on Monday and I haven’t heard anything.

@bloodywhitecat That's it. They even told him how lucky he was as it could be removed

The trust I work for didn’t stop cancer treatment it went to a private hospital/community hubs.

We had so many wards and areas impacted with covid it would of been a disaster for those patients to come into the hospital. But it’s been rewritten as a mild illness. While in reality it was horrific.

I'm so sorry for anyone living with cancer, or whose loved ones have it. It's very, very hard.

I do think we're more aware of it now because of social media (but let's face it, we're more aware of everything because of social media).

COVID certainly had a terrible impact, that's for sure. But even without Covid, the problem is that cancer is such a varied disease, some more easily cured than others.

It's a fair point that nowadays, most things are curable, so we notice cancer deaths even more.

The NHS is terrible. They seem to have a wait and see policy rather than doing tests, then it’s too late. Not helping when GPs are largely doing phone appointments

Approx 50% of us will get cancer. Part of the problem is that we are NOT dying of other things as we would have done years ago (in battle, childbirth, or of now-treatable diseases), so it may seem more noticeable. What the pandemic showed is that a proportion of the population seem to have an unrealistic expectation that they will live forever. That will never be true, so time for all of us to be a bit more realistic.

I still feel that an alarming number of people are dying much younger than they should be, even if many other illnesses are curable.