Question:  Thank you for taking my question.  I am 43 years old and was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma back in August. My friend has had breast cancer and she told me to get a second opinion with her doctor. He said I didn’t have breast cancer. How can that be? I am now going to get a third opinion but I don’t understand how one doctor can say I have cancer and one says I don’t.

Answer: I’m sorry you are in this predicament–I understand how difficult this can be. It’s important to find out who was making your diagnosis and why the second doctor said you didn’t have cancer. Your diagnosis is made by your pathologist and so I would recommend getting a copy of both pathology reports and then finding out the qualifications of the pathologists who read your biopsy. You didn’t mention what the second pathologist’s diagnosis was so it’s difficult for me to understand why something that was called invasive ductal carcinoma was now called benign.  There are some lesions in the breast that are benign and can mimic cancer unless the pathologist has a lot of experience in breast pathology. I am glad you are getting another opinion and I hope you get this confusion solved quickly so you can move on.