Philecia La'Bounty on the Impact Sharing Her Breast Cancer Journey Has Had on Others: 'They Are So Grateful'

Mar. 15, 2025

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. 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.”

La’Bounty requested a mammogram but was turned down—twice. “You’re 29, 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. Over the next month, a series of tests revealed that La’Bounty, a part-time model based in Huntington Beach, Calif, 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,” says La’Bounty. “I was being poked and prodded and touched and scanned and seeing ten doctors in a week. Was my modeling career over? What was I going to look like?”

Amanda Friedman

By October 2019, she was cancer free, and had four years of remission before being diagnosed with a second kind of breast cancer in March 2023, a more aggressive kind of breast cancer called Her2+. La’Bounty underwent a double mastectomy and another 12 rounds of chemotherapy—before a PET scan revealed the cancer had again metastasized to her lymph node.

La’Bounty’s frequent posts chronicling her battle with cancer have triggered an overwhelming response from her followers– more than 56,000 onInstagramand more than 110,000 onTikTok. “Honestly I have probably heard from over a million [women] over the last 7 years,” says La’Bounty. “They are so grateful.”

“They are thankful that I taught them they can fire doctors, they can ask for alternatives, go for second opinions, set boundaries with friends and family, and deal with the real nitty gritty of cancer – all the little things no one mentions, “ she says. “Because the doctors’ jobs are to keep us alive. But there’s so much more [to having cancer].”

La’Bounty’s honest posts have also inspired others to take their own health issues more seriously.

“Whether you realize it or not, your videos are making a HUGE impact,” wrote one follower. “You are paving the way for people to fight for tests to receive a proper diagnosis instead of getting pushed off because you aren’t of age for such a medical condition. You are the reason I started fighting for answers a year ago.”

Another follower wrote to thank La’Bounty – who lost all of her hair weeks after starting chemotherapy – for her transparency about wearing wigs. “I want to personally thank you for being so open about your wigs,” wrote one Instagram follower. “ I just bought one and tried it on for the first time and SOBBED at how amazing it looks. I feel like I look like ‘myself’ before breast cancer.”

Recently, La’Bounty was at work as a solar panel sales associate when a gallbladder cancer survivor approached her on the street. “‘Hey, I know you,’ the woman told La’Bounty. “‘I am so blessed to meet you today. Thank you for everything you do and post. You just give me so much hope. You show that you can have these cancers and still live a beautiful life.’”

Philecia La’Bounty with a friend.Courtesy of Philecia La’Bounty

Courtesy of Philecia La’Bounty

Though La’Bounty continues to struggle with intermittent waves of nausea from the targeted therapy treatments, she has her sights set on the future, walking two miles every other day with her dogs, Cole and Canyon, and is planning a family trip to Hawaii in May to celebrate her 38th birthday.

source: people.com