Mark grew up in a small Pennsylvania town where nobody locked their doors and kids came home when the streetlights turned on. He moved to Indiana for college, played football, and never left. Decades later, cancer came for him too, just like it had for his grandmother, great-grandmother, four uncles, and his mother, who died just weeks before his diagnosis.

Cancer had always lingered in the back of Mark's mind. With so much family history, he knew it was a matter of when, not if. So when he ended up in the ER in late October 2022 with chest pains, a migraine, and a lump on his neck he'd been ignoring for months, the news wasn't entirely a surprise. What followed was a fast-moving chain of referrals that landed him at IU Health the very next day, face to face with a diagnosis and a doctor who didn't sugarcoat a thing.

Read how Mark went from that appointment to calling himself a survivor, and why he now recommends his doctor to every head and neck cancer patient he meets.