College student, 22, brushed off two common symptoms as a sinus infection… before life-changing diagnosis

A Texas college student has revealed how a headache and pressure in her nose led her to discover she was suffering from an acute form of blood cancer. 

In September 2024, Breeze Hunter, 22, a student at Texas A&M University, felt like she was having a ‘rubber band’ pulling at her head and was rapidly losing weight. 

However, she kept dismissing her changing body and constant pain as a persistent sinus infection, something she was prone to.

The young student recalled: ‘I had a lot of fluid in my ears, which was causing the headaches. I went to a clinic a few times and they pretty much said it was a sinus infection.’ 

But a month later, she decided to visit the doctor’s office on her campus after finding herself too weak to walk up a flight of stairs or even go to classes – where she underwent a blood test. 

Realizing that Hunter was severely anemic – where the body lacks enough healthy red blood cells – doctors at the clinic urged her to go to an emergency room.

She then tried going to an ER close to her campus but since they were full, Hunter decided to visit The University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital in her hometown League City, Texas.

After multiple blood tests, Hunter and her family were finally told that she was suffering from high risk acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer and was admitted to MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. 

She told TODAY.com: ‘I told them that the headaches are still here. I’m very weak and had fatigue. They recommended doing a blood test.’ 

‘I had many people coming in and saying, ‘It’s looking like a sign of leukemia, but we’ll keep testing because it could be a bunch of other things’.  

‘I freaked out. I had no idea what leukemia was. I was like am I going to survive this? Or is it treatable?’

Acute myeloid leukemia affects the myeloid cells in the bone marrow which are responsible for maturing into red and white blood cells in the bloodstream.

Once turned cancerous, these cells move from the bone marrow into the blood and spread the disease to other parts of the body, including the lymph nodes, liver, spleen, brain and spinal cord. 

When it affects the brain and spinal cord, it can cause symptoms like headaches and weakness in the body. 

Unlike other cancers, there are no numbered stages of AML and it can progress in rapid speeds. 

Some symptoms of AML include fatigue, feeling cold, dizziness, pale skin, shortness of breath, easy bruising and bleeding with no clear cause. 

The exact causes are unclear, however, smoking, being overweight, radiation exposure and previous chemotherapy can increase risks of developing AML. 

But many patients, like Breeze Hunter, don’t fall into any of those categories. 

In 2024, over 20,00 Americans were diagnosed with AML and about 11,200 people died from the condition. 

Possible treatments often include chemotherapy, targeted therapy and at times stem cell transplantation (a medical procedure that replaces diseased or damaged blood-forming stem cells with healthy ones from a donor). 

Within days of being diagnosed, Hunter underwent a bone marrow aspiration (a sample of the liquid part of bone marrow taken for testing) and a spinal tap (a sample of cerebrospinal fluid taken from the lower part of the spine).

The doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center also kept her in the hospital and placed her seven days of chemotherapy infusions along with an experimental cancer-fighting pill, which was part of a clinical trial. 

Much to their surprise, doctors tested Hunter’s bone marrow after 21 days of starting chemotherapy to see if the treatment worked and saw improvement. 

She was then placed on a second seven-day round of the treatment and showed significant improvement. 

‘I was supposed to get at least six rounds,’ Hunter said. ‘The chemo worked so well I only had to do two.’

According to her now-viral TikTok page, the college student was on a six-month chemotherapy plan that ended earlier this year. 

After undergoing 11 rounds of radiation to kill any possible lingering cancer cells in her brain and spine plus an new intense round of chemotherapy, she received a stem cell transplant from her 21-year-old brother, Roy.

A stem cell transplant, also known as a bone marrow transplant, replaces damaged or diseased bone marrow with healthy stem cells that can develop into different types of blood cells. 

It is done to treat various conditions, including certain cancers, blood disorders, and autoimmune diseases.  

‘I got a radiation/chemo burn all over my body, which was very very painful and I was pretty much burnt all over,’ she said. The chemotherapy regimen ‘was harder than the leukemia one.’

Following the transplant, she has remained in the hospital for to make sure everything went well and protect her from potential infection from her weakened immune system.

‘Probably towards the end I was over it. I was like, ‘I can’t do this. This is too much,’ Hunter recalled. ‘It was very hard at times but God’s watching me. So, I knew I was going to be OK.’

Since the end of her intense treatment, Hunter is now in remission and claims to feel better as well as stronger and intends to walk in her college graduation soon.