Everyday Extraordinary: Philecia Labounty, pt 2

We sat down for a follow-up interview with Philecia Labounty, who is currently battling stage four breast cancer and sharing her journey on Instagram. She tells us what she's been up to since our first interview one year ago, gives an update on her current health status, and shares what makes her grateful. 

Reflecting on the interview we did last year is pretty crazy. In a year’s time a lot has changed. I’m no longer cancer free, and I’m actually in the middle of my second battle. In April, my last PET scan revealed that my ductal carcinoma had come back, so we decided this year to do a double mastectomy. The mastectomy revealed a second type of breast cancer, HER2 positive. I am currently nine rounds into twelve weekly rounds of chemo to eliminate that, and then we’ll do more PET scans afterwards to see where we stand. 

Anyone going through cancer knows that five years of remission is the goal, and it was a gut punch knowing I just barely missed that milestone. After my mastectomy, I went from a 38DDD bust to an A cup. Emotionally, it’s hard not knowing what your body is going to look like and watching it change. Because we jumped into chemo so quickly after, I feel like I still haven’t had much time to process the experience. 

If you follow me on social media, then you know I’m almost TMI about my journey. I don’t hide anything. If you see my journey and it pushes you to go get more testing and do more for yourself, then in some way, I believe that what I’m going through was meant to happen. Is it easy? No. Putting yourself out there for people to ridicule is really hard. But when I get the messages from people saying they booked their mammogram because of me, or that sharing my double mastectomy made them feel less alone about theirs, I know that everything I’m doing is part of my path. 

I feel really good when I get those messages saying, “Thank you for posting that. I sent it to my friends and family. I didn’t know how to tell them that this was what I was feeling.” Sometimes it feels impossible to explain what you need or communicate what you're feeling. So, knowing that people are sending my videos to their friends and family members, or mimicking what I’m saying because they can’t find the words themselves, gives me a lot of purpose.

There’s also a lot of people who watch my videos who have never been around someone who has cancer or haven’t dealt with cancer or any serious medical issues themselves. People tend to run away when people are sick, and I think educating them that we are just humans going through this really specific experience, and this is how you can support us, gives them a little more confidence to be around people who dealing with medical issues. 

It’s really beautiful to see people extending themselves to make somebody else’s day. If you're unsure what to do, just ask your fighter what they want. What I want is not what everybody wants, but I do hear it echoing through the community that we want to feel normal, and if that means just going to get a cup of coffee with me or sending me something that’s absolutely not cancer-related, that just helps us keep our mind of the thing we think about 24/7. 

I’m just so grateful for life. Although I’m not living to my fullest capacity because of the situation that I’m in, and the fact that I’ve had to put a lot of big goals aside to focus on survival, I’m thankful. I’m thankful to wake up and make a cup of coffee, to wake up and take a breath, to go to work, and to get to go to treatments, because there’s a lot of people who don’t get this opportunity to fight twice. We all get lost in the hustle and bustle, and I’ve just learned that you can be so internally grateful for everything that you have and still fight for your dreams. You don’t have to force yourself to hate your life, or be so unhappy that you can’t see the goodness that’s in your life, to create more greatness. You can be happy with your situation and still want more. 

Although I would love sometimes to sit in my bed and cry and wonder why, life is so much more than that. I’m thankful for my little apartment that will someday be a big home, for my little family that will someday be a big family, for my short pink hair that will be long and blonde again someday. Being grateful for what I have right now is fueling me to be prepared to be so much more grateful when I get to the big moments that I’ve been fighting for.