section_path: Personal life/Illness and death
section_name: Illness and death
paragraph_text: Illness and death
  
  On October 2, 2020, Lewis announced that she had been diagnosed in 2019 with stage III breast cancer after she conducted a self-exam. In her announcement at the time, she encouraged her followers to be up to date on their mammograms after revealing that she had not gotten hers leading up to her diagnosis. "I need you to share this with the women in your life who may be as stubborn as I was about mammograms and I need you to tell them that they have to do it," Lewis said in her announcement. "Early detection, especially for breast cancer, changes your outcome. It can save life."
  
  On October 15, 2024, she announced that her cancer had progressed to stage IV after six years. Around that time, she sat down with CNN correspondents Stephanie Elam and Sara Sidner —who in 2024 were also diagnosed with breast cancer—to discuss their health journeys.
  
  During their conversation, Lewis opened up to Sidner and Elam, whom Lewis met during her first year at Howard University and whom she counted as a best friend, about the course of treatment she chose. Although Lewis had refused to undergo a physician-recommended double mastectomy, she expressed her ultimate regret over not having earlier consented to the mastectomy her doctors recommended.
  
  In January 2025, Essence published an article stressing that "prevention is the real cure" by Lewis. "I also couldn’t figure out how to fit the double mastectomy, the full chemotherapy and, potentially, the radiation they were telling me to have into my already overwhelmed life," Lewis noted in a timeline of her breast cancer management. "All while managing the major stress of ending a 10-year relationship with the man I loved—my son’s father," Lewis wrote of the treatment-seeking relocations between California and Arizona that she embarked upon, which also included a trip to see "an American doctor in Mexico." Lewis's open letter addressed the financial and emotional challenges she faced, her healthcare insurance woes, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her treatment, and her views on quality of life among other topics:
  
  "Going into 2025, I would say to women: Do everything in your power to avoid my story becoming yours. If I had known what I know now 10 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up here. I would have been cold plunging, exercising consistently, making sure my vitamin D levels were good, detoxing my body on a monthly and yearly basis, and sleeping better. I would’ve been doing all the things I’ve been forced to do now, to keep my body from creating more cancer and remove what it has already made."
  
  Lewis died, surrounded by family, in hospice care at her home in Los Angeles on June 11, 2025, at the age of 52.
  
  On October 2, 2020, Lewis announced that she had been diagnosed in 2019 with stage III breast cancer after she conducted a self-exam. In her announcement at the time, she encouraged her followers to be up to date on their mammograms after revealing that she had not gotten hers leading up to her diagnosis. "I need you to share this with the women in your life who may be as stubborn as I was about mammograms and I need you to tell them that they have to do it," Lewis said in her announcement. "Early detection, especially for breast cancer, changes your outcome. It can save life."
  
  On October 15, 2024, she announced that her cancer had progressed to stage IV after six years. Around that time, she sat down with CNN correspondents Stephanie Elam and Sara Sidner —who in 2024 were also diagnosed with breast cancer—to discuss their health journeys.
  
  During their conversation, Lewis opened up to Sidner and Elam, whom Lewis met during her first year at Howard University and whom she counted as a best friend, about the course of treatment she chose. Although Lewis had refused to undergo a physician-recommended double mastectomy, she expressed her ultimate regret over not having earlier consented to the mastectomy her doctors recommended.
  
  In January 2025, Essence published an article stressing that "prevention is the real cure" by Lewis. "I also couldn’t figure out how to fit the double mastectomy, the full chemotherapy and, potentially, the radiation they were telling me to have into my already overwhelmed life," Lewis noted in a timeline of her breast cancer management. "All while managing the major stress of ending a 10-year relationship with the man I loved—my son’s father," Lewis wrote of the treatment-seeking relocations between California and Arizona that she embarked upon, which also included a trip to see "an American doctor in Mexico." Lewis's open letter addressed the financial and emotional challenges she faced, her healthcare insurance woes, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her treatment, and her views on quality of life among other topics:
  
  "Going into 2025, I would say to women: Do everything in your power to avoid my story becoming yours. If I had known what I know now 10 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up here. I would have been cold plunging, exercising consistently, making sure my vitamin D levels were good, detoxing my body on a monthly and yearly basis, and sleeping better. I would’ve been doing all the things I’ve been forced to do now, to keep my body from creating more cancer and remove what it has already made."
  
  Lewis died, surrounded by family, in hospice care at her home in Los Angeles on June 11, 2025, at the age of 52.