Mindy Brooks would like to start a “Fight Club,” and she’s asking everyone to join in the battle.

Her 15-year-old son, Hunter, has been treated recently for brain cancer. A high school freshman from Medford Lakes, Hunter completed radiation and chemotherapy this summer.

Losing his hair when classmates are figuring out how to make the most of theirs has not been easy for Hunter or other teens who receive chemotherapy. They’re dealing with their illness and, at the same time, the everyday challenges adolescents face in trying to fit in with their peers as they grow into adulthood.

Brooks thought of Fight Club as an organization that would help teens battling cancer stay in shape and have some social services to turn to with their questions and concerns. It’s not that the children’s hospitals where most teens are treated don’t try to provide these services, she said, but they are focused on younger children. Teens are trying to grow up.

She heard about Pepsi Refresh, the Pepsi Co. foundation that each month distributes $1.3 million to worthy projects. Brooks applied for Fight Club under the health category. She’s seeking $50,000 to get it off the ground and needs people to vote online for the project by Sept. 30. Fight Club must finish among the top 10 finalists out of 1,147 applications to receive the funding. Brooks is asking people to go on the Pepsi Refresh website and vote for Fight Club. To cast a vote each day, visit http://www.refresheverything.com. Type Fight Club in the search box.

As of Thursday, Fight Club’s ranking was 173.

“There is never a more vulnerable time in a person’s life than the teenage years. While under attack by both the disease and the treatment, teens, especially boys, rarely reach out to share their feelings and are lost in a medical system designed for either young children or adults,” Brooks wrote in her application for the grant.

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where Hunter was treated, psychologist Lamia Barakat said Brooks’ idea is a good one. Barakat directs the hospital’s psychosocial program for oncology patients.

A 2006 study from the National Institutes of Health shows that cancer among adolescents and young adults is on the rise.

One in every 168 adolescents and young adults will develop cancer, Barakat said. The hospital identifies about 125 new cases in this age bracket each year.

“We’re not talking about a small population. We’re talking about a significant population of youths and young adults,” she said.

CHOP deals with patients up to 30 years of age, but its focus has traditionally been on children, Barakat said.
With the increase in teen cancers, “our attention is turning to how we can provide new services and enhance what we already have so adolescents and young adults don’t fall through the cracks of a pediatric center.”

Barakat said the teen years are a particularly difficult time to get cancer. It strikes adolescents when their bodies are growing and changing so rapidly, when they are trying to become independent of their parents, when they are figuring out what they want to do career-wise.

Suddenly, they may find themselves regressing — losing their hair, needing parental help, having to delay college and career decisions.

“The cancer and treatment presents barriers,” she said. “Our goal is to help (them) still focus on their goals, even in the context of cancer treatment. What the Brookses are proposing fits so well in that framework.”

Barakat noted that another reason for more support is that research has shown the outcomes for adolescents and young adults are better when they are treated at pediatric centers dealing with cancers in young people. Since the rates of survival have increased, the teens need more support. She has found that teens who go through treatment often say they feel they are stronger people for having had the experience.

“We would like to promote that as well,” she said.

The hospital is in the process of setting up a steering committee of adolescent and young adult patients to discuss what their needs are and how the hospital could best serve them.

It also is looking into a message board system in which patients can share ideas, Barakat said.

Brooks would like to start Fight Club to help hospitals provide pool tables, exercise equipment and video games for teenagers.

Perhaps, she said, the funds could provide personal trainers to help them stay in shape once they get home. She’d also like the money to be used to help pay for athletic activities or to provide a site where companies that receive complimentary tickets to concerts or sporting events could donate them to young people dealing with serious medical conditions.

“During the edgiest teenage years, they get cancer, too. … I know there’s a need for this; I feel so strongly,” Brooks said. “I don’t think there’s a time when anyone’s more fragile.”

(Comments – We here at Phatforums know Mindy very well. We have know her for year and we are extremely proud to support her in this effort.)

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