I usually check the Young Survival Coalition message boards everyday. Even though I am five years out from my cancer diagnosis, this is a place I love to go to for support and also to help other young women who are newly diagnosed.

I hope that I can be helpful in some way, maybe by answering questions or just telling the girls that I did have a positive lymph node and I'm still here with no recurrence at this time. I know that when I was first diagnosed, one of the important things to me was finding someone with the same diagnosis that was years out from chemotherapy and doing fine.

There was a poll that was done by one of the board members. I found it to be interesting. The question put out to the women on the YSC message board was -- How old were you when diagnosed with breast cancer?

The number of women that answered the poll consisted of 260 YSC members. Here are the results of the poll:

• Less than one percent were diagnosed in their teens
• 23 percent were in their twenties when diagnosed
• 67 percent were in their thirties when diagnosed
• Nine percent were in their forties when diagnosed
• Less than one percent in their fifties when diagnosed

The Young Survival Coalition is an organization for women diagnosed with breast cancer under forty years of age. So, I would expect the women in their 50's to be a low number on the poll. Thankfully, we see a very low instance of teens diagnosed.

I wasn't surprised by the results, being that most women were in their thirties. Around 5 percent of breast cancer's diagnosed occur in women 40 and under. You would assume that most of the women would be near that 40 age mark, although 23 percent, around 60 girls were in their twenties.

This is only a small sample of the women under forty diagnosed with breast cancer of the 11,000 each year. The YSC has helped to change the face of breast cancer and to get young women studied more closely so we can better understand the disease these young women are facing.

Thanks YSC!