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
