Philadelphia medical assistant Claire Dougherty is a 22-year-old who didn’t think she would get cancer. In August 2025, however, she noticed a sharp, “roaring” pain from the base of her neck up to her inner ear every time she had a drink.
“I kind of told myself maybe it was something with vodka,” she told Kennedy News and Media. So she switched to gin and then wine, but the pain came every time. Still, Dougherty wanted to go out with her friends and not leave because her neck hurt. By September, she felt a lump in her throat and went to a doctor who ordered a CT scan and biopsy, and found a tumor on her trachea.
In November 2025, she was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer.
The pain was in her lymph nodes that had already swollen from cancer and were reacting to alcohol. That reaction is actually a rare symptom of Hodgkin lymphoma, in which alcohol can cause an inflammation near affected lymph nodes.
#lymphomafacts – Hodgkin-5
Unusual presentations:
– intractable itch: always do CXR to rule out mass
– alcohol induced pain: rare but classic symptom
– persistent raised eosinophils
– autoimmune (ITP, encephalitis, vasculitis)
– nephrotic syndrome (min change GN)#lymsm #lymphoma pic.twitter.com/ACGUmYRjKR
— Graham Collins (@graham74GC) August 17, 2018
Dougherty completed six rounds of chemotherapy by this February, which shrank the tumor pressing on her airway. She is now gearing up for 20 rounds of radiation. “I hated going and getting all of the testing done,” she admitted.
“But it’s worth it to know what’s going on in your body.”
These days, young adults keep showing up in oncology offices with diagnoses that were once reserved for much older people. For instance, colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer deaths among adults under 50 in the U.S.
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Yale Medicine surgeons have called that a “clear uptick.” One week at a Yale colorectal practice, every single patient diagnosed with rectal cancer was young; the oldest was 35. The youngest was eighteen years old.
Yale Medicine colorectal surgeon Vikram Reddy, MD, PhD, says:
“If anyone has any change in their bowel habits, if they have any bleeding—even if they think it’s a hemorrhoid, and it doesn’t go away—just get a colonoscopy.”
I was diagnosed with stage-3 colorectal cancer at 31 — the symptoms that made me get a colonoscopy https://t.co/8M2knuueFD pic.twitter.com/PYnAJPjF5r
— New York Post (@nypost) January 31, 2025
The problem is that 22-year-olds aren’t supposed to think about cancer. So they try to mask their symptoms by using intolerance, stress, or a pulled muscle as excuses. Experts aren’t entirely sure what’s driving the rise in cancers among younger generations, either, though sedentary lifestyles, processed diets, heavy alcohol use, and obesity are on the suspect list.
Genetics plays a role in some cases, but in many cases, there is no clear hereditary trigger.
