B.C. woman waits for court to decide 'the truth' after losing breast to mistaken cancer diagnosis

When Elena Ivanova found a lump in her right breast after a skiing accident in early 2016, she wasn't too concerned. Years previously, after breast-feeding her two daughters, she'd noticed a similar mass but it turned out to be nothing.

Ivanova wanted to be sure, though, so she went to see her family doctor. A mammogram and a biopsy followed, before a shocking appointment with a surgeon who told Ivanova she had a rare, aggressive cancer known as a metaplastic carcinoma.

"I couldn't believe it. Time stopped for me," the 61-year-old dog groomer from North Vancouver, B.C., said.

Just nine days later, on March 24, 2016, Ivanova underwent a total mastectomy, and braced herself for the punishing chemotherapy and radiation treatments that would follow.

But when it came time for her first appointment with an oncologist at B.C. Cancer to discuss a treatment plan, Ivanova was hit with another bombshell.

"The doctor said, 'I have good news. You don't have cancer,'" she recalled in an interview with CBC News.

"It's hard to describe what I felt. For what I had this surgery? … I know it's good news, but it was very, very, very hard, because it's a human body. If you damage it, you can't restore it."

In May, more than seven years after Ivanova had her breast removed, a B.C. Supreme Court civil jury awarded her $400,000 in damages from Dr. Robert Wolber, the pathologist who wrongly diagnosed her with cancer.

But Wolber is appealing that verdict, which means the bulk of the jury's award has been held back, and it will be months before Ivanova has a resolution.

The wait has been frustrating.

"I really wanted to find the truth," Ivanova said. "People have to be protected. Mistakes like this shouldn't be done, and if they are done, it needs to be fixed."

Wolber has not responded to requests for comment. His response to Ivanova's claim denied any negligence and maintained that "all medical procedures and investigations carried out by him with respect to the plaintiff were appropriate to the circumstances and in accord with standard medical practice."

The response points out that while Wolber's biopsy report did diagnose Ivanova with metaplastic carcinoma, his recommendation was for an excisional biopsy to remove the lump so it could be examined more closely, and not a mastectomy.

But Dr. Ashley Cimino-Mathews, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. who specializes in breast tumours, wrote in an expert witness report that an excisional biopsy would not be the appropriate response to such an aggressive cancer.