Adolescence and early years of youth These are times of change, of expanding circles, of breaking them, of starting new paths, of gaining independence and of defining one’s own identity. It is at this stage when life opens its doors to us and where each person begins to be themselves: and they are alone and in full right. But this is something that It is not always fulfilled. There are times when a unexpected alters the order of things. Thus, and in the face of a change in the situation, the objectives and priorities are different.
It is estimated that in 2024 they will be diagnosed 286,664 new cases Of cancer in Spain, according to the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM). Of them, between 3% and 5% will be in under 25 years old. It was in July 2022 when Andrea Turienzoknown as soydrei on social networks, he became part of that percentage. “I saw a lump between my armpit and arm and I went to the doctor. At first they thought it was a lymph node left over from a respiratory infection I had had, but when they saw that it didn’t go away with antibiotics, they referred me to the hospital, and an intense month of tests began. In July 2022 they confirmed to me that I had a synovial sarcoma, a tumor that was very malignant and grew very quickly,” he tells Infobae Spain.
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Two months before his diagnosis, his grandfather had died. At that time they found out that he had metastases. “It was a bit of a mix of my grandfather’s death and my diagnosis that made me think that I am on a sidewalk and death is in front looking directly at me,” he explains. “Life goes away at any moment. You spend your entire childhood, pre-adolescence and adolescence thinking that you have time and that life is very long and suddenly you realize that maybe it’s not like that“, Add.
However, in his case it took him a few months to assimilate what he was experiencing. In fact, she confesses that in this first diagnosis she was quite dissociated, a common feeling among oncology patients, even more so if they are young people or adolescents. “In the initial impact after diagnosis, that feeling of unreality appears, of disbelief. Suddenly they find themselves in a new reality that somehow affects their life projects. But not only that, but they also feel that it is a parallel reality to what their peer groups, their friends, are experiencing,” explains Javier Zamora, psychologist at Aspanion, the Association of Parents of Children with Cancer of the Valencian Community.
“There are people who are diagnosed starting university or taking the selectivity tests, in these cases there is a impact on studiessince they have to leave them temporarily,” says Alexandra Carpentier, head of the Patient Experience Program at the Josep Carreras Foundation and leader of the project. Young people and leukemia (2022). The same thing happens in the workplace: their professional careers are frozen for a season. Furthermore, in the words of Carpentier, “more than a half of young people who have just become independent have to return to their parents’ house or move out of town at the family level during the illness,” he highlights. With all this, there is a part of the identity that all adolescents or young adults should do with friends and with experiences that are lost during this stage. And what’s more, for many, ending treatment does not mean ending this sensation. “The majority feel that it opened a parenthesis in your life “They thought it would close and it seems that in the end it never closes,” he says.
In fact, in Andrea’s case, it was after receiving the news that she was clean from cancer when he entered a depressive episode. “When I finished everything I realized that I was going to go from being a sick person to being a healthy person. Was a bomb that came to my face, “That made me realize that what had happened was what I was experiencing,” he explains.
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To return to reconnect with life After illness is also a complex process. “It is important to be aware that, sometimes, this return to normality, which is great news, is a new stage of adaptation. Therefore, psychological changes continue to appear and, therefore, it is essential that the young person feels with the ability to put words to what he is experiencing,” adds psychologist Javier Zamora.
Furthermore, this path is also full of difficulties. More than half of those who return to school present physical and cognitive complications in returning to study. On the other hand, 40% they have to pay the fees again of exams and subjects. In the workplace, they encounter problems explaining the empty on their resumes and they have to deal with companies’ fear of hiring someone with health problems. In short, “you go down a highway with a normal mid-range car that can go fast and you go quite well, like everyone else. But suddenly they make you get out of it and give you a 1980 Ford Fiesta and try to get you back to a normal rhythm,” Carpentier illustrates, paraphrasing a patient.
In the same way, while patients try to reestablish their life plans, the specter of the disease is still present: the timing of check-ups increases the fear of a future relapse. “Patients may continue to feel threatened, and here uncertainty appears, as well as greater vulnerability and anxiety prior to consultations. It is important that at this moment we also put words to these fears,” Zamora emphasizes. Thus, for Andrea, that fear became reality.
“After a clean year, in March 2024 they told me that, in the last CT scan, after five days a super small spot in the left lung,” he says. Upon receiving the news, his anxiety began to grow and his thoughts became more and more negative. But her visits to different medical specialists managed to calm her down. “In less than a month was operated and everything was ready. The result was another synovial sarcoma, a metastasis from the main tumor one and a half centimeters. Everything went very well, but to prevent, as I am 23 years old, you have to give chemo. I start it on June 4,” he says.
Now she describes her relationship with the disease as the one she has with “a toxic friend”. He knows that the Andrea he was in 2022 no longer exists. His physical identity has changed, something that took him a while to accept, not out of rejection, but out of the respect that his own reflection gave him. In his professional life, he had to postpone starting to work on his own; and personally, he began to learn to play the guitar with the left arm, because the right one didn’t quite respond. He has also gained a maturity that, although he is sometimes grateful, he thinks does not belong to him. “To my friends I feel like I’m taking three lives out of them. Right now I would have to worry about when I’m going to go out partying at the next festival, not about knowing when I’m going to start chemo,” she confesses.
The process has been hard. And although thanks to him he has also been able to meet new people and enjoy very good moments, the truth is that when it comes to evaluating it the balance it comes out unbalanced. However, the young woman clarifies that there is also something good about experiencing cancer at this age: “If I had gotten this at 60 years old, I might have been weaker, or more tired, or with less desire to live. But right now I can’t with the I want to take on the world. I still have a lot to do, I just came out of my shell, my momentum is running out and desire to live”, he concludes.