Professor's cancer battle documented in online videos

COLUMBIA, Missouri - At first, David Oliver ignored the bump on his neck that 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 medical students and hospital workers how to care for dying patients, then took an unusual step. He made a video to break the news to colleagues. When the clip spread far beyond his college, Oliver undertook a bigger mission: documenting his treatment in regular videos and promoting an unusually public conversation on medicine and mortality.