Around April 2015, I started to experience mild headaches. They weren’t unmanageable, but they kept lingering. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but one day around the middle of June, I noticed my tongue felt numb and weak. That was more concerning than the headaches alone, so I went to my primary care physician who ordered an MRI.  

The scan revealed a cancerous mass around the base of my skull involving the carotid...