Diagnosis: Young, The New Face of Cancer in NC

Cancer a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal

cells in a part of the body

We all know what it is because chances are we

all know someone fighting cancer right now

It doesn't matter how old you are

It doesn't matter how healthy you are

This is a random process that can happen to any

of us in 2025

More than 2 million new cases of cancer will be

diagnosed in the United States and more than 618,000 people

will die from the disease

In North Carolina cancer is the second leading cause of

death following heart disease

What can we do to move forward because I don't

want to die so what do we need to do

Doctors say the disease that destroys so many lives is

getting younger where we've seen patients that are far too

young to have these diseases so I've seen folks with

these types of cancers um in even in their twenties

The WREL documentary unit set out to investigate who this

is happening to

It does not run in your family

Nope not at all

And they did genetic testing when I was diagnosed and

everything came back normal

You're looking around and you're the youngest person by

You know 30-40 years sometimes people say it all the

time I'm healthy

I was working out

I was in the gym I was doing everything right

How did this happen Well one of the things that

went through my mind is why and you have to

believe that there's an environmental influence

Is there something in the diet Is it associated with

low fiber So you

Really think food is a is a big one

It's hard to ignore

And what's being done in North Carolina to save lives

You think to yourself like what is our common denominator

What like why are we all getting it What like

what is it This is Diagnosis Young the new face

of cancer in North Carolina

You run all the time still Yes how often More

than I should

Probably like 4 to 5 times a week I run

You run more than you should Yeah probably

Like it's too like you need to take a break

yeah but why do you do it The biggest thing

for me is mental health also being an athlete for

my whole life

I need something where I just get outside and just

kind of push my body to the limit

My name is Hope Reynolds and I was diagnosed with

breast cancer at 21

This is my life

This is my life over the last 4 years

The first thing you notice in 25 year old Hope

Reynolds' apartment is this giant picture wall like an Instagram

feed come to life

This is um at our white coat ceremony

This is my roommate and I

This one was um at the Duke Notre Dame football

game and we were on TV and my friends and

I were so excited that we were on TV

We thought we were like famous

But unlike Instagram it's not just the highlights

So this is my tattoo and my mom's tattoo

Tell us what the middle says there

It says pray big worry small but I just like

loved it because it's kind of how we live our

our lives

Yeah and I feel like cancer has brought on that

mindset

Tell me about your diagnosis

So when tell me about that time in your life

It was starting my senior year of undergrad at Hope

College in Holland Michigan

I was a swimmer so we were just like getting

changed one day in the locker room and had noticed

some changes in terms of my right breast and my

roommate she kind of like pointed it out and not

like in a bad way but we kind of made

fun of it we're like oh my god that's so

weird kind of ignored it for a couple of months

and then ended up just getting like really sick towards

the end of August really bad migraines was not able

to eat anything and

Like just throwing up everything that I put into my

body so I called my mom and she asked if

I had done a self exam which I had never

done before because I was 21 at the time and

didn't think that that was something you even had to

do that young um so when we hung up I

did a self exam and I found a lump about

a week later I met with my primary care physician

and they wanted me to get a mammogram done and

I called the place where I was gonna get the

mammogram done and they said that they wouldn't give me

a mammogram because I was so young

And they were like OK well let's get an ultrasound

then and I still remember the person who read my

ultrasound came in and said that she saw something that

was concerning but the odds of it being cancer were

so low because of my age but they wanted to

do a biopsy just to be sure and that was

when I was diagnosed with stage 3B breast cancer

Um it was invasive ductal carcinoma and it had already

spread to one of the lymph nodes on my right

side

Invasive ductal carcinoma is the most common type of breast

cancer accounting for more than 80% of all breast cancer

cases in the United States

In 2024 an estimated 16% of new invasive breast cancer

cases in the US were diagnosed in women under the

age of 50

My first thought it was I don't have time for

this

I was beginning my senior year of undergrad so we

were just starting our swim season

I have the most amazing parents in the world who

took on all the logistics for me so all I

had to do was kind of just show up after

finishing my eight rounds of chemotherapy

I had a bilateral mastectomy in February of 2021 so

I went through 25 days of radiation

What was the toughest part of all of that out

of all of that I would say the toughest part

for me was losing my hair

I didn't want to accept that it was real but

when I had to cut my hair and then as

my hair started to fall out like there was no

way to ignore it anymore but I will say I

feel like now looking back on it the hardest part

for me has been life after cancer has been

The tough part after treatment yeah I think the hardest

part for me has been learning to trust my body

again because I don't understand and they'll never be any

reason as to why I got it so young so

you you ran 5 miles a day super healthy eater

doesn't run in your family

You still got it at 21 yeah

Do you ever think what could this be Could it

be the food Could it be like do you ever

go through those scenarios I mean I've heard all about

things like plastic in the environment makeup food stress all

of that stuff and I find it interesting to learn

about but I don't know if I'll ever really know

why I got it at 21

Tell me about that time in your life a couple

of years prior to that where you were doing the

the my bodybuilding shows yeah

I used to be a personal trainer at a gym

I met this lady and she would tell me all

the time like I think you should compete and I

was like OK I'll give it a shot you know

I didn't have no kids

I was just kind of doing my own thing and

I did my first show I did really good

I won my because they go by like your group

and that's pretty much like height wise so I want

that

Fast forward I moved to Virginia like a couple of

years later

I had my daughter and so I I vowed to

myself

I'm like OK by the time she's 2 I'm gonna

step on stage again and so um I stepped on

that stage and she was 2 and I did really

well at that show too

I placed well but I didn't win or anything like

that

It was fun while I lasted

I love watching people do it and I'll go to

shows but I'm just like yeah it was fun while

I lasted

Do you think that experience helped at all with this

fight Oh yeah for sure yes for sure because it

just teaches you like you can't give up you gotta

keep going you gotta keep fighting so it was just

like alright Bianca how bad do you want it and

I definitely took that into my fight for sure for

sure

My name is Bianca Harvey and I was diagnosed with

colorectal cancer at 34

2023 in the beginning of the year I started having

like some stomach pains and so I went to the

ER a couple times

They were all telling me the same thing

They may be GERD which is like a stomach some

type of stomach issue

This is an unbearable pain

I'm coming home

I'm crying

I'm crawling on the floor and y'all telling me y'all

think this is just GERD and then once I got

the colonoscopy that's when I found out like oh I

have um colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer or colon cancer is the leading cause of

cancer death among men under 50 and the second leading

cause of cancer death for women under 50 after breast

cancer

When you got the diagnosis when they told you the

words what went through your mind I try to be

optimistic about it because my dad had just beat colorectal

cancer in 2019

I was like OK if my dad was OK then

I should be OK too

So when we met with my doctor um up at

Duke

That's when he told I'm like why am I having

all this pain in my pancreas Like I know it's

colon cancer but like what is going on and he

was like oh because it it has spread now so

he was like you're at stage 4

So then that's when it was like a shocker so

we were like

Well what do you what do you mean like stage

4 like what does that mean You are like one

of the biggest drops

I say all the time my doctor he was so

calm he was like you know it is stage 4

but we we do have a plan in place we

are working on some things and I feel like that

gave me some comfort if he's not like going crazy

about it then I'm not either

Also I have a daughter so I was just like

I'm not ready to talk to him about that yet

It we'll cross that bridge if we get there or

when we get there but if he's calm I'm gonna

be calm in this moment

So tell me you mentioned your daughter a couple of

times

Like how old is she What's her name She is

9 her name is Kaylani and she is the light

of my life

Good job good job

She is the main reason one of the main reasons

why I fight so hard to be here every day

There you go good job good job

Because I just I don't wanna leave her here by

herself although I have an amazing support system my parents

my mom my dad everybody's wonderful but um you know

it's just nothing like having your mom

It was just like OK like what can we do

to get me out of this because I don't wanna

die so what do we need to do I was

getting chemo every 2 weeks um and I was also

coming home with a chemo bag so I was still

being administered chemo for another 46 hours

It was hard it was hard

I I think the worst part was coming off of

a treatment and then trying to recover and starting to

recover and then going straight back

Chemotherapy was about 18 months and I just transitioned to

immunotherapy in November of last year and it's been

Such a big difference

Bianca is continuing treatment

Her doctor at Duke told me her tumor has shrunk

by 50%

She often wonders how and why this happened

My dad was really like the first person that

I knew that I had cancer like I never like

my family or friends nobody that I knew had cancer

so even with me dealing with it at a at

34 for me it was just like this is insane

it's like people say it all the time I'm healthy

I

Working out I was in the gym like I was

I I was doing everything right you know but I

just think you know GMOs them putting things in our

food what we wear you know what we put in

our hair what we put on our nails genetics too

but I do think of

Environmental has a lot to do with it

Your age though I mean do people say you're so

young you're too young you know is that something you

hear a lot I do I do and you know

when they tell me that I think about the the

babies that are going through it

What I think about the the little ones that are

going to radiation and treatment and some of them that

make it some of them that don't make it um

I follow a lot of people on uh social I'm

sorry

Um But I follow um

Some people on like social media

So this was Luna

This is a young lady that I had started following

when I first um got cancer

She had um cancer and she might have been 11

or 12 and she was doing really good and then

it came back and she was trying to fight it

but you know she didn't make it so when people

tell me that I'm young I think about them because

they're babies you know what I'm saying and

Um it's just hard it's very very hard

But what do you do Just like you just you

push forward and you have faith and you just keep

you know just just keep moving forward

And yes have faith in your doctors have faith in

yourself because I feel like it's my fight but it's

our fight

So everybody knows me as Coach Matt right Like that's

my name at the rink

You guys can pop out

We're gonna be far side

We just got one corner one group a little sharper

big push you know obviously as a as an athlete

I'm always trying to encourage the workhorse in the house

and teach my athletes to be courageous and be brave

Make sure you're

your hand at the same time as your feet and

a little sharper and to be responsible and more curve

curve I very often say that my mission as a

hockey coach is to turn young men into leaders

I think that's my ultimate mission

How did the tournament go And so cancer's just giving

me kind of an extra arm to that mission

My name is Matt Cross and I was diagnosed with

testicular cancer at 36 years old

So I'm originally from Canada

I grew up in Toronto and I have coached youth

hockey players my whole life

What's up And in 2011 uh I moved down here

to take a job with my current employer starting this

life in Raleigh and kind of exploring everything that Raleigh

has to offer

My dad was actually down here on a trip from

Canada

He was going through some some things with his heart

and so my dad was trying to connect some of

the dots and so I actually promised him that I

would put on his Apple watch to take the like

EKG reading on your Apple Watch and I did that

and it came back abnormal

And that was really strange and so at the end

of the trip uh I promised my dad that I

would go to a GP to get my heart condition

checked out

I had a lump on my testicle uh that was

there for a number of months and typical guy I

like you know figured I'd go to the doctor when

I had a real reason to go to the doctor

and was probably a little bit scared and ashamed and

so while I was getting my physical I said hey

you know why don't you check out this lump that

I have it ended up being cancerous

I was stage 2B so stage 2B means that the

cancer originated in the testicle um but then moved up

into my stomach so into a closer region

Testicular cancer is the number one most common cancer for

men ages 15 to 35

Standard treatment for testicular cancer is an orchiectomy so they

remove the testicle that that is cancerous

What's incredible is chemotherapy with testicular cancer is pretty much

a medical miracle

A guy named Doctor Einhorn

Kind of came up with the chemotherapy regimen that is

now taken the cure rates to almost 98% if it's

caught early and so I went through three cycles of

chemo um you're going 5 days in a row for

about 5 or 6 hours and then you have a

two week break and you repeat that uh 3 times

And so when I got diagnosed it was like uh

coach Matt's got cancer um and so that news obviously

spread pretty quickly

I had people that came and sat with me during

treatment um a lot of the local hockey teams taped

their sticks purple and put ribbons on their jerseys and

so how blessed was I that I had this huge

community and network that kind of rallied around me and

so it was really a big part of my fight

was I can't let these people down

I have to

You know show these people what you do and I'm

sure that plays in a nonprofit

That's exactly kind of how the nonprofit became an idea

It's called the Raleigh Testicular Cancer Foundation

Our slogan for our charity is check your acorns um

and that's kind of like a clever cute way to

encourage men and young people to perform self checks

Uh we're trying to tear down stigmas so that men

You know book that doctor's appointment and that that annual

physical and obviously as a career coach there's an arm

to all of these kids um and young people that

I work with at the rink and when I went

through cancer I think I kind of became a cancer

life coach as a new cancer patient the first thing

you kind of look up online is you see all

these stories of people ringing the bell and being in

remission

And so I know when I first went in to

start treatment I looked around and I'm like there's no

bell in here and the story goes when I came

in for my very last day of treatment they had

installed a bell

And so I was able to have a celebration and

ring it

it was a really important milestone

I I say that too as a cancer patient and

survivor you learn to celebrate all the wins the small

ones the big ones all the little things become such

a bigger deal

If you have cancer or not though right If you

have cancer or not I'm just truly like filled with

so much more gratitude

And how amazing is that like it's like the most

amazing thing that ever happened to me was getting sick

which is incredible to say right I mean it's it's

nuts

No pun intended

Bianca Hope Matt all with the same diagnosis

You

Between 2010 and 2019 early onset cases of 14 different

cancers increased in at least one younger age group that

includes colon breast uterine and testicular cancers

Sure enough when the data came out none of us

were surprised that these are increasing

incidents 1 in 5 people diagnosed with colorectal cancer are

now under 55

It's expected to go up by a total of 30%

of where we're at now

More women under 40 are being diagnosed with endometrial or

uterine cancer

Rates have gone up more than 3% every year

Seeing patients that I knew being afflicted with this disease

who were younger and had young children

It had a profound effect on me and I actually

changed my research trajectory

Tell me when when did that happen There's two patients

actually and they both lived in the neighborhood across the

street from me and one of the patients um her

children were about the same age as my children and

we were you know all on swim team together and

we see them at the pool that was

That was probably the moment

It's hard it's so hard when you see someone with

advanced disease and there's not a lot you can do

to help them

And did she Make it you know she didn't

But she inspired what we're doing today

Doctors say cancer isn't just getting younger the tumors are

different

They tend to be different based on the decade of

life

Even when we are catching it early there is some

anecdotal not population-based evidence that it does seem more aggressive

That's still early to

but that's the general trend

The big question why is this happening What is the

molecular reason for this and what are the environmental or

genetic reasons We ask ourselves what's really changed over the

last 30 to 40 years as a population in the

United States

Alcohol consumption has declined

Um we've also seen sexually transmitted diseases declined

We have a lot less fiber in our diet and

we have a lot more processed foods in our diet

You have to believe that there's an environmental influence whether

or not it's the air we breathe the food we

eat the activity

Um that we're engaged in every day and that's why

I think it's multifactorial but in part it is due

to the obesity epidemic

You know diabetes obesity sedentary lifestyle all of these kinds

of things all play into the the convoluted aspect that

is ultra processed foods

Ultra processed foods are things in boxes and bags manufactured

not made in your kitchen chips frozen meals sugary drinks

filled with chemical preservatives and very little actual nutrition

I think one really simple way to think of ultra

processed foods is just to go back through where it

started

OK so it was a potato in the ground and

now it's

The sliced fried oily chip with a bunch of flavors

on it and it's artificially naturally flavored and I don't

know so I'm just gonna eat it you know because

it tastes great and and that's that's fine that we

do that occasionally but if it's our mainstay of different

meals you know it can be a real problem

We've gone from an environment where you used to eat

food that came out of your own garden to an

environment where now everything

at the grocery store and a lot of people don't

even eat raw foods or vegetables

Nearly 75% of food consumed in the US is considered

ultra-processed

One analysis found a 10% increase in ultra-processed food in

your diet could raise your overall cancer risk by 13%

Another study found men who ate the most ultra

Processed foods had nearly a 30% higher chance of getting

colon cancer

It's very hard to ignore that

Dr

Nicholas DeVito at Duke who believes so much that food

is a factor in causing cancer he wrote an op

ed about it says it's still a theory

He said more research on more patients is needed and

it's probably a combination of things

All the processed food

You as a doctor so what what are people supposed

to do watching this at home So I think there's

kind of like the daily choices that are made and

there's also the insistence on like why don't I know

why don't I know how this affects what's in my

body so that lack of communication with the public is

something that the public can insist on the the the

FDA and other organizations in the government work on your

taxpayer dollars

There is groundbreaking research happening in North Carolina to figure

out why cancer is getting younger

Duke started a working group called Yogi

Yogi is the young onset gastrointestinal cancer group the laboratory

investigators the public health the primary care radiation oncology surgical

oncology gastroenterology

They share

lab results in research through a digital biobank to figure

out what's causing patients under 50 to get this disease

So we're able to follow every patient that is diagnosed

with a gastrointestinal cancer going forward and going backwards at

Duke and being able to tell my patients that when

they come in they feel alone like why am I

diagnosed

I thought this was a disease that doesn't happen in

people my age

No actually it does and we're studying it and we're

trying to understand why

Because so much of understanding cancer is realizing it can

happen to anyone

I mean Bianca is a great example of this because

she is someone who is healthy and this should have

never happened to her on paper

I Hey how are you good to see you too

Bianca's doctor at Duke is Doctor Nicholas DeVito

She remembers when he told her her cancer had spread

So he was like you're at stage 4

So then that's when it was like a shocker so

we were like well what do you what do you

mean like stage 4 Like what does that mean And

that's when it stage 4 we largely consider these cancers

incurable

Because he was so calm and he was like you

know it is stage 4 but we we do have

a plan in place

We are working on some things and I feel like

that gave me some comfort

This is a brave new world of immunotherapy

Bianca was in two clinical trials at Duke the first

for over a year

Now she's being treated with immunotherapy only

Unlike chemotherapy which kills rapidly dividing cells like cancer cells

but also healthy cells too

Immunotherapy helps your own immune system recognize and attack cancer

cells

This is from back in November when you started on

the trial

Her cancer has shrunk by more than 50%

and we're going to get into this discussion at 2

years where we're taking this 37 year old at the

time is what she'll be I think off of all

treatment whatsoever for a previously unresectable or stage 4 colon

cancer and and that's a remarkable thing to witness the

crap out of that those are my favorite stories when

people tell me about the ringing the bell or they're

in remission or you know they've been cancer free for

20 years like that brings me joy and it gives

me hope

Her big goal her dream personally is to ring the

bell

I think she can ring the bell

I do

Thank you so much

Oh nice and warm

OK thank you

When you have a response like Bianca has for the

tumor has continued to shrink over the course of several

scans that her her blood work looks great that she

looks great that she's just continued to feel better the

entire time it's very very hard to ignore that

But if we can't detect it anymore it would really

really convince me that you know it's time to ring

the bell

Yes I keep telling everybody I'm like we're gonna have

the party of the century when I can ring that

bell like we are going to have a ball we

are going to celebrate

I don't know I think I might go into remission

first

Yeah

So she's not only done this for herself but she's

done this for a lot of other people as well

I feel like

It's my fight but it's our fight like we all

been you know we've all just been in this fight

together

Lord please let me be here Lord I wanna be

here Lord you know I don't wanna leave my baby

here like I I want you to know that I

wanna fight to be here

I'm not just giving up