Aida Burkins boarded a flight to Chicago last year expecting the usual pop of pressure in her ears once the plane landed. It never came. What followed was nine months of worsening symptoms, misdiagnoses, and mounting fear before doctors in February finally identified the cause: nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare cancer of the upper throat.
The 22-year-old from Hemet, California, is a mother of two children, ages 1 and 3, according to the New York Post. After the flight, her ears simply would not pop, and she began visiting multiple doctors who repeatedly attributed her symptoms to lingering altitude sickness. Her condition did not improve. Instead, it deteriorated rapidly, bringing worsening hearing loss, fatigue, weight loss, and a persistent ringing in her ears.
A Cascade of Warning Signs
Burkins also developed severely inflamed adenoids that eventually required removal, and at one point experienced bleeding into her throat that emerged from her nose when she bent at the hip roughly 90 degrees, the outlet reported. She was eventually referred to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who discovered a mass blocking her Eustachian tube. The specialist described the mass as very suspicious for cancer.
A second biopsy followed after swelling developed on the left side of her throat, and CT scans revealed extensive tumor involvement across multiple regions, including cervical lymph nodes near the base of her skull. In February, doctors in Hemet confirmed the diagnosis: nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare head-and-neck cancer that begins in the nasopharynx — the upper throat located behind the nose and above the back of the mouth.
Why an Airplane Ride Exposed a Hidden Tumor
The flight preceded Burkins's persistent ear symptoms, which were later linked to a tumor-related obstruction. The Eustachian tube connects the middle ear to the back of the nasal cavity to equalize air pressure, and tumors that originate near that opening can physically block the passage responsible for that pressure equalization, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. In Burkins's case, that tumor-related obstruction was associated with the persistent ear symptoms that followed the flight, per the Journal of Laryngology & Otology.
That is part of why the diagnosis took so long. The nasopharynx cannot be viewed during a standard physical exam, and initial symptoms such as ear fullness, nasal congestion, and tinnitus frequently mimic benign upper respiratory conditions, the Cleveland Clinic notes. Visualizing the area requires specialized endoscopic tools that go well beyond a routine checkup, which helps explain why Burkins's early complaints were repeatedly chalked up to something more ordinary.
According to StatPearls, adults with unilateral middle-ear fluid should receive a thorough head and neck examination, including nasopharyngoscopy and imaging when appropriate, to rule out serious underlying conditions. A review indexed by PubMed Central found that nasopharyngeal evaluation with biopsy in adults with adult-onset middle-ear effusion could yield a neoplasia diagnosis in 0.4–7.4% of cases.
A Rare Diagnosis for a Young Woman
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is uncommon in the United States, affecting fewer than 1 in 100,000 people annually, according to 2026 data from the American Cancer Society. But the disease follows a bimodal age pattern in low-incidence countries like the U.S., peaking first among young adults aged 15 to 24 before rising again in adults aged 65 to 79 — a pattern that puts Burkins's age squarely within the first peak. The same data show the cancer is far more common in endemic regions like Southern China, where incidence reaches 25 to 30 cases per 100,000 men, and that men worldwide are two to three times more likely than women to develop it, making Burkins's case doubly unusual.
Research published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has also linked the Epstein-Barr Virus to non-keratinizing forms of the cancer, describing it as a key viral trigger alongside environmental factors such as smoking and certain dietary exposures. The dossier does not indicate whether Burkins's case has been tied to any specific risk factor.
Treatment and a Guarded Optimism
Burkins underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a regimen that follows standard clinical protocol for locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer, according to the Merck Manual Professional Edition, which notes that surgery is rarely used for these tumors given their proximity to critical skull-base structures. The treatment caused her cancerous mass to shrink significantly, and her doctors say her cancer is responding well. She is now nearing the completion of treatment, and her care team is optimistic she will become cancer-free.
Survival outcomes for the disease vary sharply depending on how far it has spread by the time of diagnosis. Patients with localized nasopharyngeal cancer have a 5-year relative survival rate of approximately 82%, a figure that drops to 72% once the cancer reaches regional lymph nodes and to below 50% if it spreads to distant sites, per data from eMedicineHealth and the NCI SEER database.
Throughout the ordeal, Burkins said her children were her anchor, identifying them as her support and purpose in fighting the disease. She said she feared not being able to watch them grow up and hopes to one day watch them do just that, cancer-free. “Cancer does not discriminate,” Burkins said, according to the Post, urging others not to dismiss persistent symptoms as something minor.
Hoodline has previously reported on the dangers of untreated nasopharyngeal tumors, including a Michigan case in which a mother received a life sentence after her son died from an untreated tumor left to fester. Separately, cabin pressure problems have made headlines this year after a Fort Lauderdale-bound Allegiant flight turned back in May following a cabin pressure alert that left 13 people needing medical evaluation for severe ear pain.
