My ‘sinus infection’ turned out to be a one in a million nasal cancer at just 28

A 28-year-old California woman has described her shock when she was diagnosed with deadly sinus cancer, which affects less than one in a million people, and had to have her right eye removed.

A “golf ball-sized tumor” that had spread across her face was initially mistaken by the woman’s doctors for a sinus infection.

Annika, who posted about her condition on TikTok, woke up one morning in 2023 and noticed pain in the corner of her right eye.

At first I didn’t think anything of it, but by the evening “the right side of my face started to really, really hurt,” she said in the video.

The next day, her face became swollen around her right eye and she went to see a doctor.

A CT scan in the emergency room showed inflammation around Annika’s eyes, leading doctors to suspect she had sinusitis. Her swelling subsided within a few days, but it returned within a week.

When Annika went to the emergency room for the second time, “the doctor touched my eye and said, ‘This doesn’t feel like a sinus infection.'”

Now, a CT scan has revealed a lump “about the size of a golf ball” that “wasn’t there three weeks ago.”

Annika was just 27 years old when she was diagnosed with stage 4 sinus cancer SMARCB1, which had spread to her face, lungs, and lymph nodes.

Sinus cancer starts in the nasal cavity, which is located just behind and around the sides of the nose. Although several types of cancer can grow there, SMARCB1 is thought to be extremely rare.

according to NIH research, fewer than 200 cases have been reported in the medical literature. The study also noted that it accounts for only 1% of all head and neck cancers.

Although much remains unknown about the prognosis, the NIH notes that most patients survive only two to four years after diagnosis, and that “late-stage tumors are associated with a poor prognosis.”

Symptoms include nasal obstruction, headache, proptosis, and nosebleeds.

Annika said she started chemotherapy “almost immediately” and it lasted nine weeks.

However, she saw little improvement and underwent surgery in December 2023.

“They also had to take tissue around my right eye, including my right eye,” she said in another TikTok video.

“So what you’re looking at now is a section of my thigh that essentially fills that gap.”

“I was told that the color would fade a little, but my thighs were very tanned, so the color is different.”

Annika is currently undergoing an experimental treatment plan that includes chemotherapy and immunotherapy to slow the spread of the disease.

Although the statistics are grim, Annika admits she doesn’t know what her prognosis will be.

“I know it’s not great,” she said.

“Anyone who has read about my cancer knows that it is ‘rare, aggressive, and has a poor prognosis,’ but no doctor has ever sat me down and said, ‘This is how long you have to live.’ It was.”