Roberta Burns was diagnosed with esophageal cancer on her 64th birthday. She’d been dealing with dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, for several months. But it wasn’t until the early hours of her birthday, when she was unable to swallow an aspirin, that she went to the emergency room. When doctors couldn’t fit a scope down her throat, they opted for a CT scan. It revealed a tumor high in Roberta’s esophagus near her voice box. <...