Supporting Each Other at Planet Cancer

AUSTIN - A local website is giving young adults with cancer a planet of their own. Planetcancer.org provides young adults a place to gather and garner support from their peers that have also been diagnosed with the disease.

Courtney Clark, Director of Development at Planet Cancer, says that the website gives older people a peer support group that is unlike any other.

"There's a lot going on for kids. If you're an older person, you probably have a lot of peer support from people your age. But when you're in your 20s and 30s, all your friends are getting married and having babies or partying and no one understands the position you're in," said Courtney Clark.

Courtney Clark is also a cancer survivor. She was diagnosed with Melanoma at age 26. She quickly had to have surgery which left her searching for other young adults going through the same thing.

"Even though I have great friends and family that love me and support me and try to understand, they don't really get what it feels like," said Courtney Clark

The site's founder Heidi Adams is also a cancer survivor. She started the site last year and it now has 4,000 members all over the world.

"You log on and there really is this whole world of other survivors and patients at your fingertips," Clark says.

Jordan Deathe is one of those 4,000 members, who was diagnosed after his freshman year of college.

"I started chemo less than two weeks later, asked my doctor if I could go back to school for another semester," said Deathe.

Of course, the doctor said no, and Jordan ended up leaving college and spent the next couple of years in and out of the hospital. Hewent out in search of others his age going through the same thing and came across Planet Cancer.

"I began to have trouble with survivorship, trying to synthesize what I had gone through," said Deathe.

On Planet Cancer, young adults can blog, join groups, chat and post videos about what they are going through.