She Was Twice Denied a Mammogram — Then Diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. Now Her Cancer Is Back: 'I Can't Imagine Not Fighting'

Philecia La’Bounty’s first clue that something was wrong came one night in January 2018, while she was out at the movies with her boyfriend. 

Adjusting her sports bra, she felt a marble-sized lump near the bottom of her left breast. “'Am I really feeling this?',” she thought. “That was not normal to me.” 

The next day she discussed her concerns with the physicians at the family practice office where she worked as an administrative assistant, near her home in Huntington Beach, Calif. 

Because she wasn’t covered by the practice’s health insurance—and couldn’t afford private insurance—they referred her to a nearby government-assisted free program. “I didn’t feel sick, but I didn’t feel right,” she says. 

Results from an ultrasound indicated that it was likely a benign cyst. But when La’Bounty requested a mammogram to be sure, she was turned down—twice.

“You’re 30 you’re healthy and you have no family history of breast cancer,” she was told. “Come back if it bothers you.” 

By June, the lump had grown dramatically, and was visible through her clothing. “I went back in and said, ‘I don’t really want my boyfriend to touch me, and I don’t want to touch it. It’s freaking me out,’” says La’Bounty, who also worked part-time as a model. 

Over the next month, a series of tests—including a PT scan and eight biopsies—revealed that La’Bounty had stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs, lymph nodes and sternum. 

“It was one of the most traumatic weeks of my entire life. I didn’t want to die,” she says from the beach-town home she shares with her partner of eleven years, Brent Maggard, 40, and their two rescue dogs, Canyon and Cole. 

“I was being poked and prodded and touched and scanned and seeing 10 doctors in a week," she recalls. "Was my modeling career over?What was I going to look like?” 

What followed was a six-year battle with cancer that the 37-year-old is still fighting today. Within a few weeks after her diagnosis she began 12 grueling rounds of chemotherapy. “I felt like I got hit by a bus,” recalls La’Bounty, who has been sharing her journey on TikTok with her more than 100,000 followers.

“I couldn’t even swallow my own spit without vomiting,” adds La’Bounty, who also underwent preventative surgery to remove her fallopian tubes and ovaries, which put her into early menopause. 

By October 2019, the treatments had been succcessful, but four years later, in March 2023, the cancer returned—this time a different, more aggressive kind of breast cancer, called Her2+.

La’Bounty underwent a double mastectomy and another 12 rounds of chemotherapy—before a PET scan in April 2023 revealed the cancer had again metastasized to her lymph node. 

Since then, a new, targeted oral therapy has proven effective, shrinking the tumor in her lymph node by 50 percent and leaving La’Bounty hopeful that she’ll be in remission again by January. 

“Cancer has robbed me of so much,” she says. “I’m just ready to get back to the things that I love." 

Although breast cancer is most commonly found in women 50 years and older, experts encourage younger women to be vigilant about their health, especially if they detect a lump in their breast. 

“The most dangerous thing is that a young woman is often told she’s too young for breast cancer,” says Dr. Marleen Meyers, an oncologist at New York University Langone Health. “People need to know the important questions to ask: How can I be confident this is not breast cancer? What should the follow up be?” 

The oldest of five children, La’Bounty was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, before her mother, Stevie Weaver, 62, a former real estate agent, moved the family to Lake Havasu City, Ariz., to be closer to La’Bounty’s late grandparents, Deanne and Dick Weaver. 

La’Bounty graduated high school in 2005 and, after working odd jobs in offices and restaurants, relocated to Huntington Beach, when she was 23. 

“I felt at home here,” says La’Bounty, who met Maggard and began modeling part-time, landing gigs for Harley Davidson, and as a booth model at conventions in the U.K. and Japan. 

“I’ve been blessed with amazing opportunities,” says La’Bounty. 

That all came to a halt six years ago when she discovered the lump in her breast. 

Following the three months of intensive chemo, she settled into a long-term treatment regimen which, until her recurrence, involved taking one pill nightly for three weeks, with two weeks off.

“By the end of each round, I’m depleted,” says La’Bounty. “I have chemo brain, depression, anxiety, hot flashes, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain. That lasts about two weeks, but then I get two weeks of feeling okay.” 

The cancer’s return last year left La’Bounty with no choice but to undergo a double mastectomy in May 2023. “I try not to do surgery unless it’s a last-ditch effort,” she says.“But I knew in my body— and in my heart—that like, ‘Okay, it’s time to do the mastectomy.’” 

The procedure lasted six hours, and—after 12 weeks of intensive chemo and a life-threatening infection (“I ended up admitted to the hospital for 4 days on constant IV antibiotics")—La’Bounty finally underwent reconstructive surgery last December. 

For the past six months, La’Bounty has been on a targeted oral therapy to attack specific areas of recurrence in her left breast and lymph nodes. 

While it’s not as harsh as past treatments, she still struggles with fatigue, acute muscle pain and severe bouts of nausea—“the most intense I’ve ever had,” saysLa’Bounty, who works as a sales associate for a solar panel company. 

“But the alternative and not being here isn’t an option. So, I kind of just have to figure it out," she says.

For La’Bounty that means focusing on the future and the people she loves. Her “biggest goal” right now is to “follow my dream” and get back into modeling. And since she was able to freeze some of her eggs, she and Maggard hope to one day have children via surrogate. 

“My family is the most important thing,” she says.“There are days when I’m in the depths of depression and really trying to figure out how I can keep going. It’s intensely difficult. But I’m fighting for others so I can stay with them and enjoy life’s moments. There’s so much to be thankful for, I couldn’t imagine not fighting.”