His cancer eventually stopped responding to treatment and he passed away on November 12, 2025, Your Local Guardian reports, but his story carries a powerful message: listen to your body.

It’s easy to chalk up exhaustion, fevers, or unexplained lumps to stress or a packed schedule. But a quick visit to your doctor can make all the difference, since catching health problems early often means more treatment options and better outcomes.

Dr. Gail Roboz, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, previously told SurvivorNet that AML symptoms include shortness of breath, decreased exercise tolerance, unexplained bruising, or infections. In some cases, patients may have no symptoms of AML at all, and therefore are diagnosed unexpectedly during a routine health evaluation.

“Often patients have no idea leukemia is even anywhere on the radar,” Dr. Roboz explained.

Williams’ daughter, Zara, told UK-based independent news agency SWNS Media group, as per Your Local Guardian, that her dad would get up as early as 3 or 4 a.m. to drive her to the hospital before heading to work.

When she noticed him sleeping more than usual and mentioned it to her mom, she didn’t think much of it. With such early mornings and long days, she said, “of course you’re going to be tired.”

She added, “It had been a really stressful time, and my dad works really long hours Monday to Friday and gets very little time off except for the weekend, so of course he’s tired.

“At the time, I just thought, he’s in his 60s now – he’s a bit older; people need to rest.”

Now, Zara hopes that by sharing her dad’s story, she can encourage others to pay attention to their symptoms and get checked sooner rather than later.

How Doctors Detect Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Bone Marrow Biopsies

Symptoms of AML often stem from abnormal levels of red and white blood cells—both of which are produced in the bone marrow. When these cells aren’t functioning properly, patients may experience fatigue, shortness of breath, and frequent infections due to low oxygen levels and a weakened immune system.

To confirm a diagnosis, physicians perform a bone marrow biopsy. This procedure involves extracting both liquid marrow and a small chip of bone from the back of the hip to closely examine the cells inside.

“What we can do is actually make slides and look at cells underneath the microscope with our eyes to get a better sense of ‘are all the cells there, are the cells normal, do they look abnormal,’” explains Dr. Tara Lin, Director of the Acute Leukemia Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

“Then we do additional testing from there to characterize further any abnormal cells that may be present,” Dr. Lin added.

This microscopic analysis helps doctors determine whether AML is present and how advanced it may be—guiding the next steps in treatment and care.

Understanding Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia, also known as AML, is a cancer that affects bone marrow the spongy tissue inside of your bones. It is a rare cancer overall, but it is the most common type of leukemia in adults. Children rarely get AML.

“To understand acute myeloid leukemia, you have to understand how the bone marrow works,” Dr. Mikkael Sekeres, former director of the Leukemia Program at Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center and current chief of the Division of Hematology at University of Miami Health System, previously told SurvivorNet.

“The bone marrow is the factory that makes all of the cells that wind up in our blood stream.”

What is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)?

This so-called factory makes red blood cells that bring oxygen to our tissues, white blood cells that make up the immune system, as well as platelets, which help stop bleeding, Dr. Sekeres explained.

All of these cells perform essential functions in the body, and a spike or decline in any of them can lead to some serious health issues.

“When a person has cancer of the bone marrow, such as acute myeloid leukemia or myelodysplastic syndromes, that factory gets broken. These are cancers,” he said. “Cancers grow, and they grow in an uncontrollable way.”

Dr. Sekeres pointed out that the way blood cancer grows is different from the way other, solid-tumor cancers grow. With breast cancer, for example, someone may develop a lump or a tumor that grows overtime. With AML, as cancer grows in a confined space (the bone marrow), the normal cells in this space that would be making the red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, begin dying off. This leads to the bone marrow being filled with cancer cells.

How to Recognize Symptoms of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Treating Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)

Acute myeloid leukemia is a fast-growing blood cancer that begins in the bone marrow, the factory that makes white and red blood cells and platelets. Within the bone marrow are stem cells that eventually develop into white blood cells (WBCs), red blood cells (RBCs), and platelets, which help blood clot.

Stem cells can copy themselves to make progenitor cells or precursor cells.  Myeloid progenitor cells turn into red blood cells, granulocytes (a type of white blood cell), and platelets. AML affects the myeloid progenitor cells during a stage of development when they are called myeloblasts.

With AML, myeloblasts fail to turn into fully developed blood cells, leaving them to build up in the bone marrow and blood.

AML is diagnosed by extracting samples of liquid bone marrow and a chip of bone from the back of the hip. The samples are then tested to determine if blood cells in the bone marrow are abnormal.

WATCH: An AML Diagnosis What are the Next Steps?

Dr. Gail Roboz, an AML expert and medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, explained to SurvivorNet in an earlier interview, “The majority of patients have this sporadically out of the clear blue sky.”

Symptoms for acute myeloid leukemia can include:

• Flu-like symptoms
• Fatigue
• Fever
• Loss of appetite

AML causes certain symptoms, but having these symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean you have AML. Your doctor will do diagnostic tests to confirm whether or not you have AML before recommending a treatment.

Your doctor will then perform tests to diagnose you, and those tests include:

• Blood tests. In people with AML, white blood cell counts may be high, and red blood cell and platelet counts may be low. These tests can also show immature cells in the blood that should only be found in the bone marrow.
• Bone marrow biopsy. Removing and testing a bone marrow sample helps confirm AML after an abnormal blood test result.
• Lumbar puncture. This test uses a sample of spinal fluid to diagnose AML.
• Molecular and genetic testing. Your doctor can do tests to determine whether you have certain genes related to AML and if your cancer might respond to specialized treatments.

WATCH: Treatment decisions for AML

For people deemed healthy enough, induction therapy is the standard treatment for AML. The process involves a seven-day chemotherapy regimen, followed by several weeks of recovery. The goal of this high dose of chemo is to induce remission.

A stem cell transplant is another option for treating AML. After a high dose of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant gives the patient healthy cells to replace the ones that chemotherapy may have killed.

After chemo and a transplant, the recovery process can be difficult because the immune system will be compromised. Finding a genetic match in a donor may also be difficult.

Dr. Raoul Tibes discusses how an individual’s AML risk group is determined with SurvivorNet

Spotting a Relapse in Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Why Vigilance Matters

For many patients with acute myeloid leukemia, remission isn’t the end of the journey.

“Unfortunately, for many patients with AML, their disease will come back, and we call that a disease relapse,” says Dr. Lin.

“It’s really important that when a patient has a relapse of their disease, they see someone who has a lot of experience in treating AML,” Dr. Lin added.

WATCH: What Are The Symptoms of Relapse in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Relapse symptoms can vary, but common warning signs include:

• Fatigue and shortness of breath
• Easy bruising or bleeding due to low platelet counts
• Anemia from reduced red blood cells
• Frequent infections caused by low white blood cell levels
• To catch relapse early, patients in remission are closely monitored.

“If I have a patient with AML who’s in remission, I will follow their blood counts really closely,” Dr. Lin explains. “And if I see a drop in any of those normal counts, I will be prompted to get a bone marrow biopsy to look for disease relapse—earlier rather than later, before the patient develops symptoms.”

This proactive approach helps ensure that any recurrence is identified and treated swiftly, giving patients the best chance at continued recovery.

Treatment Options After Experiencing a Relapse

When acute myeloid leukemia (AML) returns, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

“When you go to the national guidelines for AML and relapse, there is no one standard of care,” Dr. Lin says.

“Very often we will recommend that a patient consider a clinical trial to learn more about new therapies that may be more effective at the time of disease relapse,” Dr. Lin continued.

Standard Therapies

• For patients opting for traditional treatment, oncologists may recommend a different chemotherapy regimen than what was used during initial diagnosis.
• “Several different chemotherapy regimens use different combinations of drugs,” Dr. Lin explains, “and they may be different from what the patient received the first time.”

Relapse

• After Long-Term RemissionIf a patient has been in remission for 18 months or longer, doctors may revisit the original induction therapy.
• “We will very often go back to their original regimen to try to get them back into remission,” Dr. Lin says.

Relapse After Short-Term Remission

• For patients whose remission lasted only a short time, a new strategy is needed. “We will not go back to the treatments they’ve already had,” Dr. Lin notes.
• “We try to come up with something different so we can target the leukemia in a whole new way.”

The Curative Option: Stem Cell Transplant

• Regardless of the relapse scenario, one goal remains clear: remission.
• “For all patients of AML who have a relapse of their disease, we know that the only curative option is a bone marrow or stem cell transplant,” Dr. Lin explains. “A stem cell transplant works best when patients are in remission. So the first goal when someone is in relapse is to get them back into remission.”

Questions For Your Doctor

If you or someone you love is living with acute myeloid leukemia, you may have lingering questions about your own treatment journey.

Here are some questions you can ask your oncologist to kickstart your quest for better clarity. We also encourage you to utilize SurvivorNet’s AI-powered tool My Health Questions for more guidance.

• What subtype of AML do I have, and how does it affect my treatment options and prognosis?
• What treatment plan do you recommend first, and why — chemotherapy, targeted therapy, clinical trials, or a stem cell transplant?
• How will we know if the treatment is working, and what tests will you use to monitor my progress?
• What side effects should I expect, and what can we do to manage them day‑to‑day?
• Is a stem cell transplant something I should consider? How do we determine if I’m a candidate?

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

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