Aida Burkins is 22 years old and lives in the United States. Last year, she took a flight like any other, and upon landing, she noticed something almost all of us have felt at some point: her ears wouldn’t pop.
Days passed and, instead of getting better, everything got worse. She lost her hearing, a constant ringing wouldn’t leave her alone, she felt exhausted, lost weight for no apparent reason, and began to bleed. She went to several doctors, and they all agreed on the same answer: they were the lingering effects of the altitude, nothing to worry about.
You would have trusted that diagnosis too. But one doctor decided to take a closer look and found a mass blocking her Eustachian tube. The doctor referred her to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, and the scans confirmed what no one had imagined: it wasn’t the flight, it was a rare cancer that had been growing silently.