Pamela N. Munster - Twisting Fate: My Journey with BRCA—from Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back

Pamela N. Munster, MD, is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program/Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, director of Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit, and coleader of the Center for BRCA Research. In addition to her laboratory research, she focuses on developing novel strategies to treat patients with incurable cancers as an oncologist. She serves on multiple local, national, and international committees focused on developing new treatments for cancer, has published over two hundred articles, authored textbooks, and is a frequent lecturer. A native of Switzerland, she leads breast awareness campaigns in the US, UAE, and India.

TWISTING FATE: My Journey with BRCAFrom Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back

Copyright 2018 by Pamela N. Munster

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Munster, Pamela N., author.

Title: Twisting fate : my journey with BRCAfrom breast cancer doctor to patient and back /
Pamela N. Munster, MD

Description: New York : The Experiment, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018020072 (print) | LCCN 2018031477 (ebook) | ISBN 9781615195145
(ebook) | ISBN 9781615194780 (cloth)

Subjects: LCSH: Munster, Pamela N.Health. | BreastCancerPatientsBiography. |
Women physiciansBiography. | BreastCancerTreatment.

Classification: LCC RC280.B6 (ebook) | LCC RC280.B6 M86 2018 (print) | DDC
362.19699/4490092 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020072

ISBN 978-1-61519-478-0

Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-514-5

Text and cover design by Sarah Smith

Author photograph by Nicola Pitaro

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing September 2018

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I t was just before my twentieth birthday and I was back home for Carnival in Vilters, Switzerland. Our entire village had come out to celebrate the time before Lent until the wee hours of the morning. It was an exciting time: I was a first-year medical student and a gorgeous associate history professor had finally asked me out back at school in Berne, after a year of hopeful waiting for this date. I danced with my old high school friends all through the night and without any sleep went skiing the next morning. By late afternoon, I was exhausted and wanted to get to my parents quickly. So rather than ride the gondola back down to the station, I took a shortcut across the top of a canyon to ski to their house. I probably was quite aware that it was risky to cross the ridge to get from one peak to the other, yet I felt invincible on skis and I had done this so many times.

About halfway along, I triggered an avalanche that caused me to plummet with the snow cloud 1,000 feet down. Somehow, I managed to stay afloat and came to a halt at the top of a cliff overlooking another thousand-foot drop.

Sitting there, chest-deep in the snow and looking over the edge, the first thing I did was panic. I looked back up the hill and it was terrifyingly steep. Id had plenty of training from my years on the ski team, so I knew that hiking back up on an active avalanche field can trigger a second one. I panicked more. Then, almost as quickly, I felt a curious calm come over me. Everything was going to be fine. This is no time to die, I kept thinking. Not after Id tried so hard to get that date.

Gingerly, I pulled myself out of the snowbank and inched my way up the hill through deep snow for what seemed like hours. I was barely halfway to the top when I was completely worn out and about to give up. It was sheer chance that the man running the ski lift had stepped out to take in the last rays of sunlight before closing up for the day. Looking out over the gully, he spotted me fighting my way up the mountain. He summoned another member of the ski patrol to come to my rescue. Steady and gently, the two men clipped me into a safety rope and then coaxed me to hike to the top of the hill, step by step, not looking at the snowfield ominously towering above me but down at my feet. Eventually we reached the snowmobile he had parked behind the ski patrol station and they got me down safely on the other side of the mountain.

Once home, my mother made me a hot chocolate and lit a fire. Exhausted and still shaken up, I was lying on the sofa when Dad called to ask why I wasnt at Carnival. Not really up for more dancing, I didnt even mention my harrowing ordeal, but mumbled something about being tired. Hours later, he came home furiousI was the talk of the town, this reckless girl who had skied across an avalanche field and had to be rescued by the lift operators.

The next morning I found him at the breakfast table, clearly still angry.

You raised me to take risks and not to be afraid of everything, I said defiantly.

Completely still, he looked at me for a long time. Finally he said with a mixture of lingering worry and hidden pride, Then go and conquer the world; just mind yourself!

I gave him a hug and smiled at him, regaining my confidence. Two weeks later, I had my date with the gorgeous professor, instilling in me the confidence to keep going.

I learned then that often something good will come out of the most frightening of circumstances. This outlook on life is still with me today and has led me to establish a research center dedicated to learning about BRCA gene mutation and the risks of hereditary cancer.

But Im getting ahead of myself...

Twenty-eight years later: I found myself having left my home country and the gorgeous professor to come to America and pursue a career in medical research. I was on a weekend ski trip in Montana. Sitting in a hot tub, I basked in the sun setting over the mountains. My girlfriends and I had just been talking about making plans for a future trip to Alaska when we all would turn fifty. Uncharacteristically for me, I was suddenly taken by a sense of doom and the thought What if Im not alive in two years? I quickly brushed it off, turning my attention to the scenery around me. In that moment, out in the vast snowy mountains, with a wonderful family, great friends, and a fascinating career, life seemed all but perfect. But after returning back to San Francisco, the uneasy sense of something being amiss lingered.