Woman, 29, Was Denied Mammogram Due to Age. She Has Stage 4 Cancer.

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• A 29-year-old with a lump in her breast said she was denied mammograms due to age, family history. 
• The TikToker said her lump grew to be 8 centimeters and was later diagnosed as stage 4 cancer. 
• Young women have spoken out about having serious symptoms dismissed in the medical system.

Philecia La’Bounty was at the movies with her boyfriend Brent Maggard in 2018 when she reached under her shirt to adjust her sports bra — and felt a marble-sized lump in her left breast.

“It did not feel like the rest of my breast tissue,” she said on TikTok, and Maggard agreed. 

But when La’Bounty, who didn’t have insurance at the time, went to a free clinic for an ultrasound, the results came back clean. Doctors told her she had nothing more than a benign cyst, and that she had nothing to worry about. 

After all, she was a 29-year-old in Southern California who did CrossFit and traveled internationally for modeling work. 

Still, La’Bounty felt uneasy about the mass, so she asked the clinician to put in a request for a mammogram. La’Bounty said the request was denied due to age and lack of family history — twice. 

“I had perfect blood work, 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 on TikTok. 

Eight months later, La’Bounty was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Now 35 years old and likely on chemotherapy for life, she’s sharing her story to encourage other young women to be aware of their breast cancer risk and push for answers when something feels off in their bodies. 

“Had I seen someone that I related to, that was posting about this, I would have taken my situation more seriously,” she told Insider. “I would have fought harder, I would have found a way to pay for a mammogram.” 

“If I can save one life,” she added, “that’s worth everything I post.”

La’Bounty said she knew her diagnosis was bad when the clinician kept leaving the room during scans 

In the months leading up to La’Bounty’s diagnosis, her lump grew to eight centimeters — noticeable and bothersome, she said, in the tight dresses she wore modeling at car shows. 

When she returned to the clinic this time, she was whisked into emergency mammograms and ultrasounds, she said. The technician continued to leave the room between scans to, presumably, consult with other clinicians, La’Bounty said. “That’s when I knew it was really bad,” she told Insider. 

Follow-up biopsies, a PET scan, and an MRI confirmed La’Bounty had stage 4 breast cancer, which had spread to her lungs, lymph nodes, and sternum. “My heart sank, I was scared to lose my life,…