NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
Gillian Keating\u2019s severe headaches and nausea were initially dismissed as school-related stress, before an MRI revealed a brain tumor<\/p>\n
Doctors removed the benign, tennis-ball-sized tumor pressing on her brain, but now Keating, 21, requires radiation treatment<\/p>\n
She urges others to seek second opinions, crediting persistence for her life-saving diagnosis and treatment<\/p>\n
A college student was left stunned after the headaches her doctors attributed to school-related stress turned out to be caused by a brain tumor.<\/a><\/p>\n In December 2025, Gillian Keating \u2014 a 21-year-old from Arlington, Va. \u2014 was in the midst of finals at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, when she started dealing with severe headaches and nausea. She visited a doctor but was told it was \u201cprobably stress headaches\u201d due to her workload.\u00a0However, her symptoms worsened, and the pain became so bad that she would sometimes pass out.<\/p>\n \u201cI’d never had headaches before in my life,\u201d she told Kennedy News & Media, via the Daily Mail<\/a>. \u201cI thought that was weird, and then progressively I kept having episodes of migraines where I couldn’t even move or breathe. I just had to lay in the dark and my head was shaking.\u201d<\/p>\n After returning home for Christmas break, Keating decided to see another doctor about her symptoms. This doctor immediately ordered an MRI scan in January 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin days, my life completely changed,\u201d Keating wrote in a GoFundMe<\/a> post.<\/p>\n The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now<\/a>!<\/p>\n The scans revealed she had a two-inch brain tumor<\/a>, about the size of a tennis ball. The tumor was benign (non-cancerous), but doctors suspected it had been growing slowly for the past three or four years.<\/p>\n Keating was told she needed to \u201cgo to the emergency room immediately\u201d for surgery because the tumor was pressing against her left frontal cortex, part of the brain responsible for cognitive functions, motor control and speech.<\/p>\n \u201cI was stunned. That was the last thing that I would have expected,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI was scared and worried about the surgery. I didn’t know coming out of it how I would act… or if there would be neurological effects.\u201d<\/p>\n