NEED TO KNOW
- Gillian Keating’s severe headaches and nausea were initially dismissed as school-related stress, before an MRI revealed a brain tumor
- Doctors removed the benign, tennis-ball-sized tumor pressing on her brain, but now Keating, 21, requires radiation treatment
- She urges others to seek second opinions, crediting persistence for her life-saving diagnosis and treatment
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.
In December 2025, Gillian Keating — a 21-year-old from Arlington, Va. — 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 “probably stress headaches” due to her workload. However, her symptoms worsened, and the pain became so bad that she would sometimes pass out.
“I’d never had headaches before in my life,” she told Kennedy News & Media, via the Daily Mail. “I 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.”
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.
“Within days, my life completely changed,” Keating wrote in a GoFundMe post.
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