{"id":36064,"date":"2025-04-03T11:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36064"},"modified":"2025-04-10T19:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T23:14:09","slug":"adolescent-and-young-adult-cancer-program-aims-at-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/adolescent-and-young-adult-cancer-program-aims-at-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer program aims at expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sarah Gallie was just 35 when she was diagnosed with hormone-positive breast cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A nurse by vocation, her treatment started at Toronto\u2019s Humber River Hospital, where her family doctor is affiliated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navigating multiple healthcare providers and multiple treatment options to address the disease sometimes brought out the feeling of overwhelm, but when Sarah decided to bring her care closer to home, the Newmarket resident found a holistic approach at Southlake Health that went well beyond \u201cthe big C.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah was one of the first patients at Southlake\u2019s Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancer Program, a partnership with Toronto\u2019s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unique local program, which is tailored to the specific needs of young adults between the ages of 18 and 43, helping them navigate challenges beyond medical treatment, is now marking its first year as a community success story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To mark both the program\u2019s anniversary and this week\u2019s Adolescent and Youth Cancer Awareness Week, Sarah and members of the Southlake team came together her very personal journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe young adult life is one of enormous transition and personal growth,\u201d says Southlake. \u201cIt often includes major milestones such as finishing school, pursuing a career, building relationships, and starting a family. Cancer is highly disruptive; it interrupts education, delays career starts and milestones, upends social networks and undercuts independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdolescents and young adults make up five to ten per cent of the adult cancer population and [that] continues to increase. However, due to this being a lower population, patients tend to be treated in many cancer centres as adults. Few healthcare organizations have the expertise, comfort or infrastructure to provide skilful and customized care to young adult cancer patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Says Sarah: \u201cThis is happening to young people and we need to support them in a different way; not just the medical things, because whether you\u2019re having breast cancer at 35 or 60 \u2013 it\u2019s probably the same chemo, the same radiation, the same options for surgery, but it is all those other pieces that really make a difference in how you come out at the other end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe thing about going through this diagnosis when you\u2019re at a point in your life where you\u2019re managing a mortgage, figuring out kids-or-no-kids, what that pathway is going to look like, trying to figure out the next steps of my career\u2026 It\u2019s not to say it\u2019s any better to get cancer at a point in your life, but when you get cancer, you\u2019re 60, 70, 80 years old and you\u2019ve probably done all those things,\u201d she continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to facilitating the conventional treatments, the AYA program overs a wholistic approach tailored to the needs of the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clinical Nurse Specialist Sam Scime offers individual consultations and follow-ups for patients and such supports offered through the program include fertility preservation, school and work transitions, sexual health, body image counselling, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSarah and I [connected] at the beginning of my being in this role so it has evolved over the last year-and-a-bit,\u201d says Scime. \u201cWhat happens now is we have an automatic referral process so everyone who is between the ages of 18 and 43 at Southlake automatically, as soon as they enter the cancer system, they are referred to me. My role within the Cancer Centre is to support a person and how they are impacted by a cancer experience in the ways of their life that are specific to being young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know there are so many milestones that are being reached in that period of 18 to 43. In Sarah\u2019s case, it was, where is my career going? Sarah is kind of a hot-shot nurse at SickKids and was thinking about what is going to happen next. The first time to talk to you is going to be a long conversation because I want to get to know you as a whole human, how your cancer is impacting you, figure out where the gaps are, and how I can provide support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach was particularly welcomed by Sarah, who says she learned early on in her journey that a cancer plan is never a \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having that one-on-one approach was \u201call the more meaningful\u201d because it helped them both hone in on exactly what she needed and when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some elements of the tailor-made plan included virtual meet-ups with others, taking part in a book club \u2013 \u201creading is a good distraction, especially when you\u2019re in the chemo chair,\u201d says Sarah \u2013 and, down at Princess Margaret, a hair salon for people going through chemo called Hair Gone Rogue, and even a pottery class to which Sarah was able to bring her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was able to stay working for the most part, only took time off for surgery, and sick days here and there for chemo; I\u2019m a bit of a workhorse and I had the flexibility to work from home as my job allowed, which others don\u2019t have. Sam was able to connect me with Sharon [a counsellor] who was able to figure out if I needed any accommodations for work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being able to walk on nice days from her Newmarket home to Southlake was an added bonus for Sarah. Now, she is herself part of the Southlake team, taking an \u201cinformal\u201d nursing role in their paediatric department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the AYA continues in partnership between Southlake and Princess Margaret Hospital, the local program is looking to expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have had a successful year, says Dr. Alisha Kassam, Medical Director of the AYA Cancer Program and a leading force behind its creation locally, and they are looking forward to fostering further outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow that we have been around for a year, we\u2019re able to engage with patients who have been through the program to be able to provide feedback and really looking to them to help us figure out next directions,\u201d says Dr. Kassam, nothing that some emerging themes so far include physical rehabilitation and wellbeing, and fostering Southlake and its Cancer Centre as a hub for smaller \u201csatellite\u201d cancer programs in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrincess Margret was the only place in Ontario who saw the need and developed a specialized program. Because they paved the way for the initial idea, which is having a clinical nurse-specialist-led program, that allowed us to adapt it to a Regional Cancer Centre in a community approach and make a few tweaks\u2026to have more local, community-based resources. I feel that partnership was very critical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Sam: \u201cReplicating Princess Margaret\u2019s program is not realistic\u2026in the smaller regional cancer centres, but replicating what we have done at Southlake is. It\u2019s kind of this mutual, amazing synergy that is happening. There is a lot of uptake and awareness in the needs of AYAs and we\u2019re seeing programs popping up all over the Province\u2026 I think Southlake is a model and being connected to Princess Margaret, we\u2019re all working together as a group to try and replicate what we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Gallie was just 35 when she was diagnosed with hormone-positive breast cancer. A nurse by vocation, her treatment started at Toronto\u2019s Humber River Hospital, where her family doctor is affiliated. Navigating multiple healthcare providers and multiple treatment options to address the disease sometimes brought out the feeling of overwhelm, but when Sarah decided to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9nG","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 02:23:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36065,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36064\/revisions\/36065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}