AUSTIN, Texas — Brooke Hubbert walked out of the Texas A&M Health Science Center the same way she walked in: poised. 

The 28-year-old was there for a doctor’s appointment after finding out she had cervical and uterine cancer. 

“It’s stage one, so that’s good,” Hubbert said letting out a short sigh. 

If she was emotional about the news, she kept it private. Throughout most of her day, she walked tall as if life was normal. With her daughter and boyfriend by her side, she ran some errands before heading home to log on to her PC to edit some videos. 

“This pink chair has been through a lot,” she laughed. 

The pink chair is as recognizable as her laugh when she is streaming on Twitch or Facebook. Hubbert is better known as P11NKXBL. She has been streaming and creating video game content full time since 2018. 

She is part of the 46% of women who are gamers, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Hubbert followed in her mother’s footsteps who played competitively. 

“I started game testing Halo 2 for Bungie,” Hubbert said. 

That was 2004. Since then, she has competed in more than 100 tournaments in a number of genres. For the most part, she plays first-person shooters for her viewers now. 

“I entertain people. And to make them happy, I need to be happy. It’s not always like that when the lights turn off and the green screen goes down,” Hubbert said. 

Despite her confident demeanor, the gamer admits there’s a different side her followers don’t see. Hubbert was diagnosed with Melanoma at 22. 

“It hurt to brush my hair really bad. I had brown spots and black spots,” She said. “So that led to having seven surgeries over a period of just one year.” 

Three years later, Hubbert found a lump on her left breast.

“It was swollen and everything was just hurting,” Hubbert said. 

It took eight months after her first doctor’s appointment before she had a double mastectomy. 

“It was a lot of appointments. At least one to two a week,” Hubbert said. “And then I wasn’t creating white blood cells anymore, so I just progressively started getting worse.” 

Hubbert calls the mastectomy the worst pain she’s ever felt in her life.

“I’d rather give birth to triplets all at the same time for a hundred years than go through that pain again. It was so unbearable,” Hubbert said. 

Hubbert says she doesn’t remember much after the surgery,and the following two months were a blur. She still has clips of her streaming while on prescribed opioids. She also suffered an infection on one of her incisions due to an allergic reaction to glue bandages. 

“If my dad and his girlfriend hadn’t taken care of me, I don’t know what would’ve happened,” Hubbert recalled. 

Hubbert says botched cosmetic surgery only made life worse but she kept telling herself at least she was cancer free. That was until she found out she had uterine and cervical cancer. 

“It’s going to result in a full blown hysterectomy to at least be able to have maybe a normal life that doesn’t involve the ‘C’ word everywhere,” Hubbert said with a sense of frustration. 

Hubbert hopes to get her stream back on track. She used to be a well known content creator with Mixer but fell victim to the platform’s shutdown last year. 

Hubbert is known amongst her followers for raising money for veterans through tournament winnings and stream donations. She’s donated to Wounded Warriors and sent care packages to platoons overseas. A gesture she does in honor of her step-father and father, both of whom served in the military. 

While Hubbert admits she has bad days, she’s focused on being the best mom she can be as well. 

“I work my stream around my daughter’s schedule. It’s hard to balance it all but I think we’ve been doing it for so long now that it’s just become part of our every routine day,” Hubbert said.