Cancer is the pits at any age. But rates are rising in young people like me, and we don’t fully know why

‘The time of life you get cancer will change your experience of it dramatically:’ journalist Josephine Tovey at home in Sydney. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

The pain radiated from a spot just to the right of my belly button, so precisely I could have drawn an X on my skin.

It was a Monday evening in early July 2021, and I was lying on the couch next to my boyfriend, Mick, watching Four Corners. It had been a typical lockdown day – working from the kitchen table, a stroll with a mate past the shuttered bars we used to frequent. And then it wasn’t. The pain was soon joined by a swiftly rising tide of nausea.