TikToker, 35, denied mammography due to 'young age' gets stage 4 breast cancer months later
CALIFORNIA: TikTok user Philecia La'Bounty claims she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer after being denied mammography eight months ago, owing to her young age and family medical history. La'Bounty spoke about her breast cancer journey in a video in July, describing the time she initially felt a lump in 2018. She described it as somewhat tinier than a marble and claimed that it didn't feel like her breast tissues.
In a TikTok video, 35-year-old La'Bounty claimed that she didn't have insurance coverage at the time, which led her to go to a community clinic in Long Beach, California to receive an ultrasound. Despite the reports indicating the lump to be a mild tumor, she was refused a mammogram. "At that time, I was 29 years old—it literally came back on the paperwork: 'denied due to age and no family history,'" said La'Bounty.
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She stated that when she made a subsequent application, it was rejected again. "I had perfect bloodwork, no other symptoms, no other masses, so they denied any other treatment, told me I was too young to have breast cancer, that I was healthy, it was just a cyst, and come back if it bothered me," La'Bounty said in the video. Eight months later, according to La'Bounty, she went back to the hospital in Long Beach since the tumor had expanded eight centimeters in her left breast, which made her uncomfortable.
"When I went back this time, it was emergency mammogram, emergency ultrasound — while she was doing the ultrasound she kept going out for opinion and coming back in, and that's exactly when I knew that it was cancer," La'Bounty said. She revealed to Insider on Thursday, August 18, that she would need to undergo periodic chemotherapy sessions for the rest of her life. She has openly disclosed her experience in an effort to inspire others to seek solutions and take action when anything seems amiss in their bodies.
"Had I seen someone that I related to that was posting about this, I would have taken my situation more seriously. I would have fought harder. I would have found a way to pay for a mammogram. If I can save one life, that's worth everything I post," she said. La'Bounty was taken to a treatment center for breast cancer at the City of Hope in Duarte, California. La'Bounty said, "That's where I had eight biopsies, I forget how many in each breast and one in my armpit. The next day, following that, I had an emergency PET scan and MRI."
She was later identified as having stage 4 breast cancer that had already reached her sternum, lymph nodes, and lungs. According to her TikTok video, she received six doses of chemotherapy right away. The medications included one dose of a medication she described as 'the red devil,' which the Moffitt Cancer Center describes as another term for the drug doxorubicin. According to the Moffitt Cancer Center, the red-colored medication assist the cardiac system as it tackles cancer.
Although La'Bounty claims a recent PET scan revealed no indication of the illness, she still undergoes oral chemotherapy in five-week cycles. Before beginning her first round of chemotherapy, La'Bounty realized that she would become infertile and decided to freeze 10 of her eggs. "I've always wanted to carry my own children. That's something I'm still in therapy for today," she said.