Kate's Story: A selfie saved my life

For about five years, Kate Mathis from Greenville, Kentucky, noticed that every time the weather changed her ears would begin to hurt. Then, she noticed some jaw pain followed by a bit of numbness in her face. “I didn’t think too much about it,” Kate said. “I had TMJ as a teenager so it felt similar to that.”

However, it wasn’t until September 2016 while on a trip with her mom in Spain when Kate Mathis noticed a difference in her face. As Kate went over the pictures she took during the trip, she noticed that only her left side of her face was sunken in and not smiling. Kate was soon after diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer, a rare type of head and neck cancer that starts in the upper part of the throat, behind the nose.

Her doctors decided that proton therapy would be the best approach because proton therapy would not damage her tissue in the brain, eyes and ears because of how precise it is. “Because of how precise proton therapy was, I knew standard radiation was not an option,” Kate recalls.

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Видео Kate's Story: A selfie saved my life канала MD Anderson Cancer Center