Med school prof chronicles cancer battle

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- At first, David Oliver ignored the bump on his neck he noticed while shaving. The medical school professor assumed it was calcified scar tissue from a previous surgery.

But the growth didn't go away, and his sore back grew more painful. A doctor's diagnosis confirmed the worst: He had a form of upper throat cancer called nasal pharyngeal carcinoma. It had spread to his lymph nodes and bones.

Oliver, who has spent a career teaching how to care for dying patients, took an unusual step. He made a video to break the news to colleagues. And when the clip spread far beyond this college town, Oliver undertook a bigger mission: documenting his treatment in regular videos and promoting a public conversation on medicine and mortality.

"If there was ever a time to be a good teacher, this is it," he said. "I've got a chance."

Oliver, 69, a specialist on aging, at first struggled to absorb the diagnosis in September. His cancer is considered treatable, but not curable.

He wanted to avoid the inevitable stares from colleagues at the University of Missouri's medical school. There would be whispers and uncertainty about how, or even whether, to discuss the disease. Oliver's initial video was meant to "put them at ease when they saw me. I'm still David," he said. "I might have five years. I might have six months. But I want you to be comfortable."

The three-minute clip quickly spread after his five adult children shared it with Facebook friends, who shared it with their own friends. A short time later, he started a video blog and a YouTube site.

A viewer from Japan wanted advice on how to comfort his friend with cancer. Medical students probed for suggestions about patient care.

Oliver, a former Vietnam War protester, entered the then-nascent field of gerontology four decades ago. He spent decades sharing lessons on how to die. Now, buoyed by social media, he was showing others how to live.

The second video installment featured Oliver getting his head shaved, his full crop of grayish-blond hair falling to the salon floor before the chemo drugs took their toll.

By the third video, he talked about dealing with "chemo brain," the mental fog that trails the otherwise lucid professor's post-treatment.

Some encouraging news recently: A scan showed no visible lesions -- all were less than 1 centimeter long. The cancer is "still there," he said. "Eventually it will grow back and kill me." If he has more than a year, he said, "we can produce a lot more videos."