For months, college student Breeze Hunter, 22, felt pressure and pain in her head.
“I had a lot of fluid in my ears, which was causing the headaches,” she says. “I went to a clinic a few times and they pretty much said it was a sinus infection.”
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WATCH HEREAfter Hunter became too weak to walk to classes, she underwent a blood test. When doctors received the results, they urged her to go to the emergency room immediately. She learned she had acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer.
“I felt so scared. I kind of blacked out,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘There’s no way she just said that. No way.’”
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Sinus infection leads to cancer diagnosis
While the months-long headache and pressure in her nose felt annoying, Hunter thought she simply had a sinus infection she couldn’t kick. When she struggled to walk upstairs or to class at Texas A&M, she became worried. At a follow-up appointment in October 2024, she shared her new symptoms.
“I told them that the headaches are still here. I’m very weak and had fatigue,” she says. “They recommended doing a blood test.”
Hunter loathes needles, yet she finally agreed to undergo the testing after the doctor’s urging. When her results first came back, Hunter didn’t realize how serious they were.
The clinic staffer said, ‘Your levels are all over the place and it’s not looking good. (You’re) very anemic,” she says.
While they urged her to head to the emergency room, she only heard anemic and thought she could simply pick up iron pills at a pharmacy.
“They’re like, ‘No no, I don’t think that will work,’” she says.
Hunter tried going to an emergency room close to campus but they were full, so she decided to drive home to League City, Texas. She had Googled her blood results and thought she figured out what was wrong.
“I was like, ‘Mom, I think I have leukemia,’” Hunter says. “She’s like, ‘Don’t say that. That’s not what you have.’”
When she arrived at the emergency room, they admitted her and ran numerous tests.
“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,’” she says.
The following morning, a doctor from MD Anderson Cancer Center came to talk to Hunter and confirmed Hunter’s fear that she had cancer.
“I freaked out,” she says. “I had no idea what leukemia was. I was like am I going to survive this? Or is it treatable?”
Doctors transferred her to MD Anderson in Houston, where Hunter underwent more blood tests for doctors to understand what type of leukemia she had and how to best treat it. She also underwent a bone marrow aspiration and a spinal tap.
Doctors determined she had high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and she needed to remain in the hospital for treatment, which included seven days straight of chemotherapy infusions with a pill, which was part of a clinical trial. After 21 days, doctors tested Hunter’s bone marrow again to see if the treatment worked and she did a second seven-day round of chemotherapy with the pill.
“I was supposed to get at least six rounds,” Hunter says. “The chemo worked so well I only had to do two.”
Doctors believed she would do best with a stem cell transplant and her brother, Roy, 21, was a perfect match. After undergoing 11 rounds of radiation to kill any possible lingering cancer cells in her brain and spine plus a new intense round of chemotherapy, she underwent the transplant.
“I got a radiation/chemo burn all over my body, which was very very painful and I was pretty much burnt all over,” she says. The chemotherapy regimen “was harder than the leukemia one.”
Following the transplant, she remained in the hospital for more than a month 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 recalls. “It was very hard at times but God’s watching me. So, I knew I was going to be OK.”
Acute myeloid leukemia
“Acute myeloid leukemia is a type of blood cancer. It is actually one of the most common blood cancers in adults,” Dr. Courtney DiNardo, professor of leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, tells TODAY.com. “It can present quite dramatically with life threatening infections or bleeding problems or … blood abnormalities.”
It’s also common for some patients to have a persistent infection, such as sinus infection, soft tissue infection or even pneumonia.
“AML is a cancer of your white blood cells of your immune system,” DiNardo says. “All of a sudden you have these abnormal cancerous white cells. But you really have lost your normal immune system.”
In these cases, people normally do not improve after treatments for their infections and follow-up tests indicate something amiss with their blood cell counts.
“Not everyone presents that way,” DiNardo explains. “But it is one of the presentations we see — strange infections,”
The clinical trial Hunter participated in was targeted to the type of “higher risk leukemia” she had that doesn’t “respond well to standard intensive chemotherapy.” AML isn’t staged like other cancers and high-risk or adverse-risk is the most serious form that has “certain features that make them less likely to go into a remission and less likely to stay in a remission and be cured,” DiNardo says.
“The response rates are low, and unfortunately, many people don’t survive,” DiNardo says.
The Hunter participated in is aimed at patients who have the same type of acute myeloid leukemia she has with a KMT2A translocation. Hunter received a chemotherapy regimen called FLAG-IDA with a pill called venetoclax. The pill is FDA approved for older patients who cannot handle powerful cancer treatments, DiNardo says. In Hunter’s case, she underwent an “intensive chemotherapy program with venetoclax added in as part of a clinical trial.”
“We are seeing such phenomenal outcomes, and this is not an FDA approved regimen yet,” DiNardo says. “We continue to expand this trial to enroll more patients and allow more patients to benefit.”
Hunter responded well to the treatment.
“She’s doing fantastic,” DiNardo says. “Being a college student in the prime of your life getting dealt a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, I can only imagine how life altering and depressing it could be. But she’s always had such a beautiful spirit and good attitude.”
'It keeps me positive'
While in the hospital, Hunter decided to document her experience. She even created an MTV “Cribs”-type TikTok of her hospital room that went viral.
“We did it as a joke and I posted it and it blew up instantly,” she says. “I have never gone viral.”
People shared their own experiences with AML or different cancers and Hunter met new friends who helped her navigate her experience with cancer. After the local news reported on Hunter, she met a young girl, Zoe, who has the same cancer.
“She’s 6 years old and she’s had a lot of side effects and problems,” Hunter says. “We’re best friends ... she is so young, and she has gone through way more than I have and it keeps me positive.”
After the intense treatment, Hunter finally feels better. Her immune system is strengthening, and she will be able to walk in her college graduation. It will be the first time she can be around such a large crowd of people.
“I’m so excited,” she says.
Having her friends and family’s support as well as a strong faith helps Hunter cope with her diagnosis. She’ll be on maintenance chemotherapy for the next year but then she’s looking forward to swimming and boating again. Hunter hopes her story encourages others to take their health seriously.
“Cancer is very, very scary,” she says. “If you ever have any side effects like headaches, you’re losing weight, you have bruises on you, anything like that, go to the doctor and get bloodwork done … it can’t hurt you and it just tells you if something is wrong.”
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