A MISSED DIAGNOSIS - 'I WAS TOLD I WAS TOO YOUNG TO HAVE BREAST CANCER'

AT 30, PHILECIA LA'BOUNTY FOUND A LUMP IN HER BREAST-BUT WAS DENIED A MAMMOGRAM BECAUSE OF HER AGE AND FAMILY HISTORY. JUST MONTHS LATER SHE WAS DIAGNOSED WITH STAGE 4 BREAST CANCER

- STEPHANIE EMMA PFEFFER

It was a night in early 2018 that Philecia La'Bounty will never forget. After working a long week as an administrative assistant at a family medical practice near her home in Huntington Beach, Calif., the part-time model was heading out to the movies with her boyfriend, Brent Maggard. They'd just settled into their seats when La'Bounty adjusted her sports bra and felt a "marble-size" lump at the bottom of her left breast. "It was not normal for me," she says.

The next day she checked in with physicians at work, who referred her to a free program to have it examined-since, as a per diem employee, she wasn't covered by the practice's health insurance.

The results from a subsequent ultrasound indicated it was likely a benign cyst. But when La'Bounty asked for a mammogram just to be sure, the program denied her request. Twice. "I was told, 'You're 30, you're healthy. You have no other symptoms, no family history of breast cancer. Just come back if it bothers you.""

For the next several months La'Bounty, who was born in Sandy, Utah, tried to convince herself that the lump wasn't anything serious. But it continued to grow dramatically and began showing through her clothes. "So I went back in and said, 'Hey, it's bothering me. I don't really want my boyfriend to touch me, and I don't want to touch it,"" she: says. "It's freaking me out."" Another ultrasound, a mammogram, an MRI, a CT scan, a PT scan and eight biopsies revealed that La'Bounty had stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs, one of her lymph nodes and sternum.