Tom, I hope you'll be able to pull through okay.
I see a silver lining: if the worse you have to fear is a tumor (even malignant) at least modern medecine can handily get rid of that via surgery (though the skin scarring would suck big-time - the neck is a pretty open and obvious bit of skin). I make no claim that it'd be a cakewalk to go through, but it's a lot more survivable than getting something like Hogkin's lymphoma and needing several years of chemotherapy to get through it (my father recently got through that).
Sorry, not helping. I'm worried about you, but I'm glad the worst-case scenario you're expecting is a tumor and not cancer.
Aendri, there's no need to be a perfectionist. As long as you make it reasonably believable, I'll be content. To be honest, I'd personally rather you imagine Asher in your head and write how he'd act rather than get Kokuten to help you.
Doing a JP (as I suspect you're likely planning to do with Kokuten) if you prefer it that way is fine if that's what you want to do... but I was prepared to read something that was totally Kyou-point-of-view biased rather than a completely accurate portrayal of Asher.