“In the healthcare system, if you’re not a childhood cancer patient or an older patient, you don’t belong anywhere.”
Mila was 26 when she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2020.
Today, she speaks in rooms where cancer policy and research are shaped. She has spoken at the European Commission and the European Parliament. She has participated in the first global think tank on early-onset colorectal cancer. She has trained through programs focused on patient advocacy, cancer biology, policy, clinical trials, and research.
She is helping build community for young adults with cancer across Europe.
But before any of that, Mila spent two years being told not to worry.
“You Have Nothing to Worry About”
Mila was building the life she had worked for.
She had landed a good agency and was working full-time as an actor. She was busy, traveling, meeting people, learning, and moving forward. From the outside, she was in the middle of the life she had imagined for herself.
But her body was telling her something was wrong.
She was bloated. She was in pain. Her symptoms became more difficult to ignore every month. So every month, she went back to her GP.
And every month, she heard some version of the same message.
You are overreacting.
It is probably hormonal.
It is probably IBS.
You are swallowing too much air when you eat.
You are young. You have nothing to worry about.
No meaningful investigation. No blood test. No plan that matched how unwell she was becoming.
Mila asked for a second opinion. Then a third.
Still, she was dismissed.
The pain got worse. The bloating got worse. She reached a point where she could barely function.
But because she was young—and because the people around her could not imagine colorectal cancer happening to someone her age—her symptoms were treated as evidence that she was worrying too much, not evidence that something needed to be investigated.
A colonoscopy was scheduled for March 2020.
Then COVID happened.
Because it was not considered urgent, her appointment was postponed until the end of May.
That is when they found the tumor.
The Conversation She Was Never Prepared For
Within a month, everything moved quickly.
There were scans. Tests. Iron transfusions because her iron levels were dangerously low. Surgery.
The surgery went well.
Then Mila was discharged with an oncology appointment scheduled about two weeks later.
No one clearly told her she had cancer.
No one explained what they had found. No one walked her through the possible scenarios. No one said, “This is what the next appointment is about.”
She assumed someone would explain.
In May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, she sat in a waiting room with her mother. They wore masks. Her mother sat at a distance from her.
Then Mila was called into the oncologist’s office.
She remembers details from the room more clearly than she remembers the conversation itself: the pictures on the wall, the way the books were arranged, the cracks in the floor.
The oncologist spoke for ten or fifteen minutes.
Then she noticed something in Mila’s face.
“You didn’t know that you have cancer,” the doctor said.
“What do you mean?”
That is all Mila remembers from that moment.
She remembers her mother crying. She remembers her mother speaking in Spanish, though the words did not make sense. She remembers feeling unable to move, speak, think, or process what was happening.
For four days, she felt numb.
Her mother called relatives and friends because Mila could not do it herself.
And then her mother asked a question that changed everything again.
Did Mila want to be a mom someday?
Of course she did. She had just turned 26. She was supposed to be building her life, moving forward in her career, maybe moving away, and becoming the person she had always hoped to be.
She was not supposed to be confronting fertility preservation and her own mortality.
The fertility-preservation process was rushed.
It did not work out.
Then treatment began.
The Gap After Treatment
Treatment ended in 2021.
But for Mila, that was not the end of cancer.
Long-term side effects began to emerge. So did questions no one seemed prepared to help her answer.
How do you return to work after cancer when you are still trying to understand what your body can do?
How do you talk about fertility, intimacy, body image, dating, finances, and long-term side effects when you are only in your twenties?
How do you explain to friends your own age that you are trying to rebuild a life while everyone else appears to be beginning theirs?
And where do you go when you are not a child with cancer—but do not feel represented in the adult cancer spaces around you?
Mila realized that the healthcare system had categories for people like her, but not necessarily a place for them.
Pediatric care existed.
Traditional adult oncology existed.
But young adults diagnosed with cancer often seemed to exist somewhere between the two.
They were too old for pediatric programs and too young for systems built around the needs, assumptions, and life circumstances of older adults.
“There’s no support for people like me,” Mila realized.
No one to help her navigate fertility issues.
No one to help with intimacy questions.
No one who understood the challenge of returning to work or education after treatment.
No one who could fully explain how financial toxicity, isolation, and long-term side effects can shape the rest of a young person’s life.
The system was not built with her in mind.
Finding Her People
Mila reached out to major organizations in Spain looking for support.
The response, in one form or another, was that they did not know how to help her. She was too young. She did not fit the categories they already had.
“What am I supposed to do?” she thought. “I do need that support.”
It was not until 2024—four years after her diagnosis—that Mila met other adolescent and young adult cancer patients.
For the first time, she found people who understood without needing every part of her experience translated.
She learned about Youth Cancer Europe, a pan-European organization for adolescents and young adults with cancer. She connected with Digestive Cancers Europe and an event focused on early-onset colorectal cancer.
And something shifted.
“I have a community,” she realized. “I have a safe space. I feel like I belong again. And I don’t have to explain anything at all because they just understand.”
That feeling matters.
Community does not erase what cancer took from someone. It does not undo delayed diagnosis, fertility loss, financial strain, or the physical consequences of treatment.
But it can give people language for what they have lived through.
It can give them peers.
It can give them a place where being young with cancer is not an unusual story that needs to be defended or explained.
And it can turn isolation into advocacy.
Building What Was Missing
Mila is now using her experience to help change the systems that failed her.
She has spoken at the European Commission and the European Parliament. She has been part of the first global think tank focused on early-onset colorectal cancer. She has spoken at ESMO GI, one of the world’s major gastrointestinal cancer meetings.
She has pursued advocacy training through programs including Weekend Academy, UPATI, and the VOICE course at Barts Cancer Institute. Through that work, she has learned about cancer biology, clinical trials, regulation, policy, research, and the practical ways patient advocates can influence decisions.
“It’s mind-blowing,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here doing what I’m doing if it wasn’t because of this nightmare. But it brought me so many wonderful people and wonderful opportunities, and I’m learning so much with them and from them.”
Mila did not choose cancer.
She did not choose to be dismissed.
She did not choose to have her care interrupted by a pandemic or to learn in an oncology office that she had cancer when she had not even been told why she was there.
But she is choosing what comes next.
She is helping create the bridge that was missing when she needed it most.
What Young Adults Need
If money, time, and gatekeeping were not barriers, Mila knows what she would build.
Dedicated cancer spaces for adolescents and young adults.
Places where young people do not have to choose between being treated in a pediatric environment that no longer fits and an adult oncology environment that may not understand their stage of life.
Places with clinicians and support staff trained to communicate clearly with younger patients.
Places that address fertility, sexuality, mental health, education, employment, finances, relationships, survivorship, and long-term side effects as part of cancer care—not as afterthoughts.
Places where a patient from a rural community can access specialized support without having to fight their way through a fragmented system alone.
Mila has seen that dedicated AYA spaces can change the experience of cancer care.
When young adults are treated as a distinct population—not an exception or an inconvenience—they can be seen, heard, and supported in ways that reflect their actual lives.
That should not be a radical idea.
More Than Her Diagnosis
Mila is not only a cancer advocate.
Her favorite color is black. She loves music, including Fontaines D.C., Hilary Duff, One Direction, Blink-182, Taylor Swift, Paramore, All Time Low, Olivia Dean, and Psalm 41. She still buys CDs because they bring her joy.
She wants to study Gaelic in Glasgow next summer. She has been to Edinburgh twice, and Scotland keeps calling her back.
She loves Sudoku.
And she is serious about coffee and pastries.
When Mila travels, she builds detailed Google Maps lists of coffee shops, pastry places, restaurants, and local spots worth visiting. If you need a recommendation in a city she knows, she probably has it mapped.
Those details matter.
Cancer can take up so much space that it becomes the first thing people see. But Mila is also someone who finds joy in a great coffee, a beautiful pastry, a new city, a favorite album, a puzzle on a plane, and time with people who understand.
That is part of what young adult cancer care needs to protect: not just survival, but a person’s ability to continue having a life that feels like their own.
The Real Lesson
Mila’s story is not only about persistence.
Yes, she kept asking questions when people dismissed her. She sought second and third opinions. She continued looking for support when established organizations did not know where she fit.
That persistence matters.
But the burden should never have been entirely on her.
No one should need extraordinary self-advocacy to receive ordinary care.
No 26-year-old should have to spend years convincing clinicians that their symptoms are real. No young adult should leave surgery without a clear explanation of a cancer diagnosis. No survivor should finish treatment and discover that there is no place designed for the questions that will define the rest of their life.
Young adults with cancer should not have to build their own support systems after cancer.
Healthcare systems should build them before people need them.
Mila is helping make that future more possible.
Connect With Mila
You can find Mila on LinkedIn under Mila Ogalla Toledo.
She is also involved with the GI Cancers Alliance and can help connect people with the work happening through Youth Cancer Europe and Digestive Cancers Europe.
If you were diagnosed as a young adult, what part of cancer care made you feel least seen?
And what support would have made the greatest difference?
