Trying to survive: To access lifesaving drugs, young cancer patients face huge hurdles – GLOBAL

October 10, 2022

Four years ago, Ontarian Rebecca Grundy got a nightmare diagnosis that sent her into a blind panic.

She was only 28 years old and had no reason to believe she was anything other than perfectly healthy, except for a few headaches.

But after waking up on a stretcher in the hallway of a Toronto hospital after suffering three grand mal seizures, doctors found a cancerous tumour the size of her fist on the front left lobe of her brain.

“As soon as I was told, everything closed in around me… I felt like the floor was falling beneath me and the world was just spinning around. And I literally couldn’t see out of the tears that were coming down my face,” she said.

“In that moment, my life was changed forever.”

Her diagnosis: grade four glioblastoma, an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer with one of the lowest survival rates — typically less than 18 months.

Read more: https://globalnews.ca/news/9183796/young-people-cancer-canada-medicine-treatment-disparity/

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