Queenie Freeman had no lump, no pain, no symptoms of any kind.
She’d never been sick before. Last summer, the wife of Houston rap icon Bun B learned she had stage 3 breast cancer anyway.
Now, during Cancer Survivors Month, Freeman is sharing her journey to encourage Black women to get routine screenings and early detection, even when their bodies seem to tell them nothing is wrong.
Her diagnosis began with an unrelated blood test. She was on hormone replacement therapy, and a routine follow-up showed her estrogen levels had spiked.
Her doctor sent her for an immediate mammogram, days before her already-scheduled annual screening. A biopsy and MRI followed that week. By the next morning, Freeman and her husband sat across from her doctor and heard the words no one wants to hear. She had breast cancer.
“It was really important for me to get into a better headspace,” she said. “ I thought cancer was going to be a death sentence for me.”
She was referred to Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital’s Fast Track Program, an expedited path that gets newly flagged patients into biopsies and imaging within 48 hours. Within days, Freeman sat across from Dr. Sandra Templeton, a breast surgeon at Houston Methodist Sugar Land who became part of the team guiding Freeman through her diagnosis and treatment.
“Breast cancer is kind of a team sport,” Templeton said. It’s played by a group of physicians, and we kind of center ourselves around the patient, putting the patient in the middle. And we pass the patient back and forth.”
It was Templeton who examined Freeman and delivered the initial staging news. Freeman was diagnosed with Stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma that had spread to her lymph nodes.
Dr. Sindhu Nair, Freeman’s breast oncologist, later refined the staging after finding two separate tumors in Freeman’s breast, combining them into a single Stage 3 classification. The cancer was hormone-driven, fueled by estrogen, not genetic. Freeman said she was the first in her family to be diagnosed with the disease.
“Mammograms aren’t a perfect study,” Tempelton said, noting that roughly 15% of breast cancers go undetected on a mammogram. Dense breast tissue and faster-growing tumor types can hide a cancer between annual scans.
“African American women tend to have a little bit more aggressive breast cancers sometimes, and so they often can have what’s called an interval breast cancer,” said Dr. Templeton, referring to a cancer that emerges between scheduled screenings.
Stay positive. Go in as a fighter, like you’re going to win.
Queenie Freeman, Breast Cancer Survivor
Black women face a roughly 38% higher breast cancer death rate than white women despite a slightly lower diagnosis rate, and are more likely to be diagnosed at later stages and younger ages, according to the American Cancer Society’s most recent Breast Cancer Facts and Figures report.
For Freeman, treatment meant six rounds of chemotherapy every 21 days. Her first mastectomy attempt on Nov. 5 was interrupted when her heart rate spiked dangerously, and her blood pressure dropped during surgery.
“The first chemo, it was painful. Within two days, that’s when all the pain kicked in,” Freeman said. “Every bone in my body was aching. So I couldn’t bear the pain.”
A cardiology team stabilized her with two months of medication before clearing her to try again. An infection in a surgical drain and a blood clot diagnosis pushed the rescheduled surgery back another week.
When Freeman finally went through with the double mastectomy and reconstruction, Dr. Templeton came out of the operating room to tell Bun B that all the cancer was gone.
“Having a village is so important. I couldn’t do anything for myself but go from the bedroom to the living room, to the sofa,” Freeman said. “Bun and my nieces made sure I was eating, drinking water, my mom would come over and clean up, my sister would come over and cook. My kids were there all day, every day.”
Freeman completed 30 rounds of radiation as a precaution and rang the survivor’s bell as cancer-free last February.
“Stay positive. Go in as a fighter, like you’re going to win,” Freeman said. “I wouldn’t advise anybody not to take chemo.”
Freeman said the experience reshaped her sense of purpose beyond her husband’s public profile.
“I feel like this was my test that turned into the testimony,” she said, “To help women who are scared or to motivate women to go ahead and take a mammogram.”
