We’re proof cancer is NOT an old person’s disease: Two women struck down with the ‘C-word’ in their 30s share their gut-wrenching stories

Cancer is a source of fear for many older Britons, with every strange lump or ache a potential sign of a disease which will hit half of us in our lives.

But while 80-somethings are statistically most likely to be struck down, cancer is by no means discriminate. 

Indeed, top experts are alarmed by a mysterious spike in early onset cancer – when it occurs in someone under 50. A topic was thrust into the spotlight following the shock diagnosis of the Princess of Wales, aged 42, last month.

She’s not only Royal battling the disease with King Charles yesterday, who was himself diagnosed with cancer in February, making a poignant return to public duties by visiting the University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre.

Scientists are still trying to unpick the reason behind the rise in cancer rates among in young people, despite years of research into the trend. 

But what isn’t a mystery is the human cost. 

Families have been torn apart, and young people, who should be enjoying the prime years of their life, are instead left with mental anguish and recurring health problems from their disease.

Here, MailOnline tells the stories of two women, one in their 30s and another in their 40s, of how their world was turned upside down after being diagnosed with the ‘C-word’. 

Dalia Ismail – my odds of getting breast cancer at 33 was less than half a per cent

When Dalia Ismail felt a lump on her right breast whilst showering in December 2022, she wasn’t too alarmed at first.

Then aged 33, she did exactly as the NHS advised and booked an appointment with her GP to get it checked out. 

‘At that point, I still just thought she’s (the GP) being careful,’ she said.

‘I’ve heard of other people having to go and just have checks. 

‘So, at that point I wasn’t thinking, “oh I’ve got cancer”.’

Even when referred to a consultant, Dalia still felt calm. Doctors told her it was most likely benign, but they would book in a biopsy and a scan just in case.  

Then came the ‘alarm bells’. 

Dalia originally faced a up to an eight-week wait for a scan. 

But she was dragged in for an urgent appointment where her consultant dealt the devastating blow and told her: ‘I’m sorry. But this lump is cancer.’

Being in her early to mid 30s, seemingly healthy and with no obvious family history of the disease, Dalia was left in absolute shock.  

‘I don’t have any family history of breast cancer apart from a great aunt,’ she said.

‘I’ve always been very active. I’ve always eaten very well, I’ve generally looked after myself.

‘I’ve always been into sport, exercise, eating well and keeping a good weight. 

‘You always hear about the risk factors for cancer, you know? You hear, stop smoking, drinking, lose weight, keep active and that age is the biggest factor. And I didn’t have any of those risk factors.’

Fortunately, her cancer was caught at a treatable stage — before it had spread. Dalia rapidly began treatment. 

Surgery on her breast took place in February 2023 followed by chemotherapy that started in July and radiotherapy in December that year.

Her diagnosis was a somewhat ironic twist for Dalia, given her career as an oncology clinical researcher helping develop new kinds of cancer treatment.

Having observed people go through chemo and its catalogue of brutal side effects through her work, she faced a position she never had imagined. 

‘I was very scared to start chemo,’ Dalia said. ‘It was something that I’ve always said to myself that I would never want to do.’

But, given her options, she felt she had no choice but to go through the ordeal.  

Losing her hair and suffering such extreme nausea and vomiting she needed to be hospitalised were just some of the side effects she suffered. 

‘Chemotherapy, going through that for five/six months, it really does strip you down to nothing,’ she said. 

‘Those side effects, they stay with you for a long time.’

One of the lasting impacts of Dalia’s cancer treatment has been a medically-induced menopause.

Menopause typically strikes women in their 50s, signalling the end of their fertility.

Dalia’s, however, was triggered by the powerful drugs designed to stop her body producing hormones that could fuel the growth of her breast cancer.

Dalia recalled how her oncologist described this as: ‘”What we’ve put you through in the space of one injection most women transition go through over a period of 10 years”.’

Additionally, Dalia had to deal with the ever-present fear that common illnesses and bugs could wreak havoc on her weakened immune system. 

‘When you have chemotherapy, your immune system’s obliterated, so the tiniest thing could cause a huge problem,’ she said. 

‘If you if you pick up something, then you could go into sepsis, and you can die.

‘It’s quite scary just to walk around actually and be interacting with people.’ 

This combination naturally took a mental toll on her, made worse by the fact that, technically, she was putting herself through this. 

‘You’re kind of willingly hooking yourself up to this medication that is making you ill,’ she said.

‘It really takes a lot of willpower to keep going back in every time knowing that you’re going have to then deal with a lot of horrible side effects.’

Dalia said some people underestimated the impact of having cancer while being young.

‘I think people assume that when you’re young that your outcomes are always going to be better, because you’re in a healthier body,’ she said.  

‘But getting breast cancer under 35, you’re more likely to die from that cancer and you’re more likely to be diagnosed at stage four.

‘Younger people who get breast cancer are higher risk and they’re the ones are not going to assume that they have got cancer at all.’ 

Women with breast cancer under the age of 50 can face poorer outcomes generally due to their disease being more likely to be caught in later, and in more difficult to treat stages.

This is, in part, because regular screening for the disease, called mammograms, only starts after women reach 50 years of age. 

Mammograms can detect changes in the breast tissue that are impossible to detect by touch alone.

Dalia said these factors meant women in their 20s, 30s and 40s faced a number of challenges when it came to breast cancer, 

‘You’re less likely to check, you’re less likely to follow up, you’re more likely for the doctor to dismiss you and just say “oh, you’ve just got a cyst, or “it’s just change in, your breast, due to your cycle”,’ she said.

‘Whenever you’re not in the main age category for a particular disease, there’s never going to be as much focus and research in that area.

‘My risk of getting breast cancer at 33 was less than half a per cent.’

Data from charity Cancer Research UK only 31 women aged between 30 and 34 will be diagnosed with breast cancer per 100,000 population, equivalent to less than half of a per cent of this demographic. 

Dalia is calling for the NHS screening age to be lowered to help catch cases in young women earlier and for more research generally on why younger women can suffer poorer cancer outcomes. 

‘I would like to see the outcomes for younger people with cancer being just as good as it is for those people that are older,’ she said. 

Dalia, and her medics, are hopeful about her long-term prognosis. 

But like many cancer patients, she can never be given a 100 per cent guarantee of being free of the disease. 

‘The chances are good, in my favour, that I could be cured,’ she said. ‘But they don’t know.’

Dalia says she’s been told of the risk that breast cancer cells can remain dormant for years only to return years later, an area she also said needs further research. 

She advised younger people suspicious of cancer symptoms to become ‘advocates of their own healthcare’. 

‘My friends who’ve had cancer, some of them were dismissed by the doctors,’ she said.

‘The message really is you don’t need to have the family history, or high risk lifestyle factors, you don’t need to have big boobs as they all have breast tissue.

‘You can exercise, you can run marathons, you can be doing all of this stuff, and you can still get it. If you’ve got a lump get it checked out.’

Dalia also called for greater mental health support for young people with cancer. 

‘I actually had to ask for some counselling, it was never offered to me’ she said. 

‘It was about six months or so into my treatment to get some counselling, so at the time that I really needed counselling there wasn’t anything offered to me, and when I did ask for it, I was told there was a five-month waiting list.

‘It’s quite hard psychologically, to imagine you’ve got to have surgery to your breasts. You know you’re young, and you’re going to be permanently changed and making those choices and decisions is tough.

‘You care about different things at this age, and I think also the hospitals are more set up to deal with people of an older demographic.’

She added: ‘The mental toll it takes on you, having a diagnosis, I believe, is higher than for an older person, because, for one, it hits you at that stage of life where you’re meant to be in your prime

‘That time when you should be enjoying your youth is actually a bit tarnished.’

Dalia is currently running a fundraiser to hike the Himalayas for Coppafeel, a breast cancer charity dedicated to creating awareness of the disease in young people.

Rebecca Dance – I wore sunscreen and almost never went abroad but still got skin cancer 

Having had a cancer scare as when she was 12, Rebecca Dance became religious about minimising her exposure to UV rays.   

‘I’ve always had very pale skin and a lot of moles since I was born,’ she said.

Her first brush with the disease came as a pre-teen when doctors removed a small growth on her eyelid which they found had pre-cancerous cells. 

As an adult, Rebecca became hypervigilant on both applying sunscreen and flagging any new or suspicious moles to her GP.

Then in September 2021, aged 39, she noticed one a mole on her back had changed, becoming ‘ever so slightly darker’ – a potential sign of melanoma. 

On holiday at the time, she promptly went to her GP upon her return to the UK who escalated it to be checked by a specialist within two weeks.

Luckily, Rebecca, from Reading, was able to get the mole checked in just a few days by travelling to an NHS hospital slightly further away. 

There, consultants recommended the mole be removed as a precaution and then tested for cancer. 

Again, very luckily, there happened to be a mole removal clinic spot that very same day, speeding Rebecca through the process.

‘Normally… you’ll probably wait like another month/six weeks to have it actually removed,’ she recalled. 

‘I was just so very lucky, and I’m so very thankful that they could remove it on that very same day.’

This left her with nail-biting two-week wait to learn if the mole was cancerous. 

‘As you can imagine, the waiting is for the worst,’ said Rebecca, who owns a marketing business. 

‘And mine got over the two weeks, so I was (thinking) “perhaps I haven’t got cancer, they haven’t got in touch with me”. I was a bit more hopeful.’

Calling the clinic on the third week to chase the results, Rebecca then got a call she was dreading – she was asked to come in within a few days to discuss the results.

‘I was then, in my own mind, that something has come back,’ she recalled tearfully.

Receiving that call on a Friday, she begged to be told what the result was to avoid a weekend dreading the worst. 

‘I said, “is there any way you can give me any indication, because I’ve got to go all weekend, not knowing what this is”,’ she said. 

An NHS nurse kindly called her back that evening and, after ensuring Rebecca wasn’t on her own, broke the news that she had malignant melanoma – the most serious form of skin cancer.

‘That moment that they said, “you have cancer”, my whole life flashed in front of me, and it was like “I’m gonna die”,’ she said.  

Melanoma is considered one of the more dangerous types of skin cancer due to its higher tendency of spreading to other parts of the body, like vital organs.

About 2,300 Brits die from melanoma each year, compared to just 900 from non-melanoma skin cancers. 

Fortunately, the nurse also told Rebecca her cancer had been caught at the very early stages, vastly improving her prognosis. 

‘She says “So over the weekend do not Google it whatever you do”,’ she said. 

‘I did Google, I shouldn’t have done.

‘It’s very hard because you want answers like “what’s the survival rate”.

Rebecca said her primary fear wasn’t death but leaving her two children, Harry and Livvy, alone. 

‘I wasn’t scared of dying,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t want to die and leave my children.’

Medics performed further procedures to find out if the cancer had spread to any other areas of her body.

One involved removing a larger and deeper area of the skin of her back just before her 40th birthday.

‘I then got the results literally first week of December, saying thankfully, it hadn’t spread, and it hadn’t gone to my lymph nodes,’ she said. 

Rebecca, now 42, has to stay on high alert because malignant melanoma — a disease that strikes about 17,000 Brits each year — can return.

The business owner now logs any new lumps or bumps on her body to get them checked by her GP as well as keep track of any changes to her moles.

‘What scares a life out of me is that I’m going to miss a change on one of these, especially the areas I can’t really see,’ she said. 

Rebecca has had a few scares already. One, a lump in her leg, thankfully turned out to be benign. 

She paid tribute to the NHS and the medics which treated her through her ordeal.  

‘I can’t fault the NHS and how they treated me,’ she said. 

‘Obviously there was waiting times, of course, like there is for everybody, but I felt like the whole process, I couldn’t have been better looked after.’ 

Echoing Dalia, she said like many younger adults, she had been relatively naïve about her cancer risk. 

‘I was probably quite naïve thinking “I’m not gonna have cancer I’m too young”,’ she said. 

‘And because I was so careful with my skin checks as well.

‘I don’t smoke, I only drink socially.’

‘It’s just one of the things that you just think it’s not gonna happen.’

She urged young people not to underestimate their cancer risk and not to dismiss it as an old person’s disease.

‘People think, “oh, I’m young. I’m not gonna get the cancer” like I did, very naïve,’ she said. 

‘I’m not going out in the sun in peak times, I’m not going abroad, I’m not using some beds, I still got skin cancer.’

Rebecca also thanked her children, partner, family and friends for their support during her cancer journey.