Why is it that younger women have a more aggressive breast cancer? I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Throughout my cancer diagnoses and treatment I have met many young women who had pathology of grade three cancers. Grade one is the least aggressive and can also be called well differentiated. Grade three is the most aggressive and is also called poorly differentiated. Grade two falls in between and is considered moderately aggressive.

I belong to the Young Survival Coalition (YSC). I decided to poll women on the boards to see if the theory rang true that younger women have a more aggressive breast cancer. I polled the group and asked what grade their tumor was at diagnosis. One hundred and fourteen young women participated in the poll. Of course this is only a small sample of young women diagnosed with breast cancer.

Out of 114 women only 12 percent had grade one tumors, 22 percent had grade two and 67 percent had grade three.

A positive thing about having a highly aggressive cancer is that chemotherapy seems to work better on these tumors. Chemotherapy kills fast growing cells so it makes sense that the faster growing cells would be more susceptible to the treatments.

I had a grade one cancer. In a way it makes me happy that I did have a low grade and less aggressive cancer, however, I did have a positive lymph node. My tumor was not very large. It was only 1.5 centimeters. But it did already start to spread. I feel like that since my tumor was slow growing that it might take longer for metastasis to show up. So, I worry about that-among other things!

I do think that breast cancer in young pre-menopausal women is different from the post-menopausal group. It's good to see studies done on younger women so we can figure out better ways to treat our cancer. YSC seeks to educate the medical, research, breast cancer legislative communities and to persuade them to address breast cancer in women 40 and under.