I absolutely recommend this book for anyone who is interested in knowing about breast cancer and the different treatments available. Dr. Pamela Munster is an oncologist, professor, and researcher in San Francisco. in this poignant and sensitive book, Dr. Munster found out she had breast cancer. This book tells about her experience of taking care of her patients with breast cancer to having breast cancer herself.

This is a very informative and true account of this amazing woman and physician. A must read book.
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This book was such a good book. I read it and enjoyed it very much. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Munster does a masterful job of weaving together her personal breast cancer experience, stories from her patients and her family, and solid medical information. Four years out from my own diagnosis, this book helped me continue to put the disease in perspective. Every cancer patient is different, but for the person who responds to Munster's style, this is highly recommended.

A unique book about breast cancer from the perspective of a breast cancer doctor that is diagnosed with breast cancer. Much information about treatments and research is included along with the human side of this diagnosis. Highly recommended.

I decided to read this book because over twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was twenty-two at the time. There are many books about the medical aspects of cancer out there, but there aren't many whose authors share both medical and personal experience with a breast cancer diagnosis. Because I can't ever seem to step away from cancer support and advocacy (and believe me I've tried), I wanted to update my knowledge on medical protocol and terminology. I've now survived so long that many of the ways and methods that were part of my treatment are now antiquated and out of date.
Even though decades separate our diagnosis and our age at diagnosis, I found Dr. Munster's experience highly relatable. No moment in my life has felt more dissociatively surreal than the moment a surgeon looked at me and said, "I'm so sorry. You have cancer." From that moment on., life becomes a literal free-fall into a nightmare. I appreciated Dr. Munster's candor about this truth and her ability to share about the terror and grief of cancer without making herself or other survivors out to be victims. It's a fine line and one she handles gracefully.
The medical aspect is thorough without being overwhelming for the layperson. Of particular interest to me was the discussion of treatment evolution over time, which helps me relate my own experience to the experience of survivors who are currently undergoing treatment as well.
If you or a loved one has experienced cancer or is currently undergoing treatment, I highly recommend this book.

Dr. Pamela Munster is an oncologist, professor, and researcher in San Francisco. In 2012, after treating patients with advanced breast cancer for twenty years, forty-eight year old Munster had a feeling that she should ask the nurse practitioner in her San Francisco clinic to schedule her for a mammogram. Normally, women under fifty with no family history are not screened for breast cancer. Pamela did not think about the fact that her father's mother once had breast cancer, probably because "no one ever talked about it." Munster's x-rays showed multiple irregularities, and she was advised to go for further testing.

"Twisting Fate," is an enlightening, poignant, and sensitive account of what the author experienced from her first inkling that something was wrong to the diagnosis that proved her instincts correct. Even as she and her physician/colleague, Dr. Michael Alvardo, were deciding how to proceed, Dr. Munster continued to see patients in her practice. Nowadays most surgeons do not perform radical mastectomies. Instead, they remove the abnormal areas and the patient then receives chemotherapy, radiation, and/or medication. In Pamela's case, a lumpectomy was not practical, because of the amount of breast tissue that would need to be excised. Her doctor stated that he must remove the breast containing the cancerous cells.

Munster lucidly and candidly describes not just what she went through, but also explains how decisions about surgery and breast reconstruction are made. Afterwards, also on a hunch, Munster took a test for the presence of the BRCA gene; those who carry it have a higher than average risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Her extensive medical knowledge, the love and support of her friends and family, and the compassionate care of a network of skilled practitioners helped Munster cope during this traumatic time. She needed to make crucial decisions, not just for her patients, but also for herself. "Twisting Fate" is a timely and informative exploration of a painful and complex subject. Her illness made Munster more mindful of the way she communicates with the frightened people who turn to her for expert care and reassurance. To her credit, Pamela Munster has established "a research center dedicated to learning about the BRCA gene and the risks of hereditary cancer" for men and women who carry the mutation. Dr. Munster is a courageous and thoughtful individual whose outstanding book will help readers become more knowledgeable and proactive about their health.

For anyone inflicted with cancer this is a worthy read. It has a different insight than I had seen before. My mother & aunt both had breast cancer and I have heard some of their story but not all. This was another look into someones story that I found interesting. The only thing I didn't really like was how her husband seemed very absent from what waa going on.
Overall a good read.

I am unable to open the protected PDF file, and a Kindle download is not available. This is a title that my library is particularly interested in, based on subject matter, but I cannot recommend without reading. I chose 1 star, since I must choose something to submit.

Twisting Fate: My Journey with BRCA―from Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back is aptly named. Not only is it the personal story of Dr. Pamela Munster, an oncologist, whose life takes a fated turn when she is diagnosed with cancer, but also brings to mind the colorful, twisted structure of DNA, a component of our genes.

Being a patient is often a life changing event for a doctor. Hearing Dr. Munster's viewpoint from the other side of the examining table was expected but I didn't realize how much more this book would have to offer. Dr. Munster's thorough and easy to understand explanation of her breast cancer from diagnosis to treatment is what makes this book a must. If you'd like to know more about the BRCA1 or BRAC2 gene mutations, I believe Twisting Fate will make the subject less confusing. In addition to her own experiences she shares many of her patient's case histories.

I highlighted many of Dr. Munster's thoughts as I read. I can not share them verbatim as the ARC I'm reading is possibly not the finished product. Dr. Munster expresses and experiences much the same questions and feelings any breast cancer patient would? “Why me?” proves to be a universal thought. She is frustrated by unhelpful information about the risk and prevention factors available to those trying to understand this disease. She struggles with decisions and outcomes of surgery, the staging and prognosis of her cancer. Knowing the statistics, even when there is a chance to be 97 percent cancer-free, is not as reassuring when it is your body that is being talked about. She questions whether she is making the right choices.

Dr. Munster is the first to admit that her breast cancer taught her a great deal, not only about the disease she thought she knew so much about, but also honed her skills in empathizing, caring and listening to the patients she treats. I hope doctors and patients alike will read Twisting Fate. It delivers valuable lessons and needed information.

This file was not available to download to kindle, therefore I was unable to read it. Based on summary and the fact that I must give a star rating, I will guess 4 stars.

Not to be confused with Twisted Fate by Pamela Kennedy (there is a score of "Twisted Fate" novels!), this is the true story of a doctor and professor of Medical Oncology who works at the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, a part of the University of California San Francisco, who becomes a patient and thereby gets to see her work from the other side. It's a perspective not granted to many people and definitely one no-one would choose when it comes to the medical profession, but as a doctor and a scientist, this author makes the most of it, exploring her feelings as well as her diagnosis, and constantly relating it back to her interactions with her own patients both prior to her diagnosis and afterwards as well as to the prevalence of breast cancer nationwide in the USA.

The events are written well-enough that we get to feel what the doctor/patient feels, but nowhere is it flowery or so sugary that it's actually sickening. Quite the contrary. It's very sober and a little depressing at times, but it makes for an engrossing and useful read. The relation of her reactions and feelings came across as realistic and authentic, just as if they were our own, and they made me live the experience as much as it's possible for someone of the opposite gender (why opposite? Shouldn't it be complementary gender?!) and someone who has no such diagnosis can live it.

I've actually worked in a hospital oncology ward - not as a caregiver but as support personnel, mind - yet I needed none of that knowledge to follow and understand this because the text was informative and did not talk down to the reader, while still simply explaining problems and concepts as they arose.
There were, I have to say, multiple grammar issues in the text - more than I usually see in an advance review copy. Hopefully these will be corrected before the actual published copy is released. I list them here to that end:
"So at worst the tumor would small" - I assume this should read 'would BE small'
"Kate told me that she had noted that her skin dimpling about a couple of months back" - I assume this should read, 'skin WAS dimpling' or 'noted her skin dimpling' (omit 'that').
"...no woman needs the dreadfully surgery..." - dreadful, not dreadfully
"...the goal to reduce the body's estrogen in the body." Too many bodies! Either 'to reduce estrogen in the body' or 'to reduce the body's estrogen'
"So why are so many mastectomies are still being done" - Too many 'are's!
"What appeared important early on may not remained important as the time goes by" - 'may not HAVE remained important'?
“And all of us a sudden I found myself weeping” There's an us that shouldn't be in there.
“...specific sections on chromosomes 17...” There’s only one chromosome 17 per genome!
One thing I couldn’t help but find curious in this book was how little involvement the author's husband appears to have in this. It’s not my business and not my place to judge; a marriage either works or it doesn't work according to its own rules, and everyone's is different, but after having read a book recently where the author brought her husband into it to what felt like an inappropriate degree, this book contrasted sharply with that one in that it felt like this author all but excluded her husband in a situation where emotional support from family is a critical component of patient care. It may well just have been an accident of the way this was written, and since this was an ARC, things may change before the final published version, but I think it's worth some thought regarding adopting this approach.

This seemed especially relevant given that her husband is also an oncologist and thereby had a much deeper insight into what was going on than your typical spouse might. More of his involvement would have been welcome in my opinion, but there's this one brief mention when they were on a hiking holiday right before she was due to have a double radical mastectomy, and she asked him how he felt about her losing both breasts and he didn't even address the question. Instead began talking about something entirely unrelated.

That to me, seemed decidedly odd, if not outright callous. The author explained it away by saying that's how he always as - it wasn't a big deal to him so he wasn't interested in talking about it, but it presented him in a very cold light, especially when contrasted with how frequently she mentions how emotionally supportive her staff and colleagues were. It stood out quite starkly.

The author talks about her colleagues, staff, and patients quite freely, too. I am assuming - and hoping! - that she's changed the patient names at least. I also hope she asked her colleagues if they wanted to be mentioned. I'm a very private person so had I been a colleague I would have resented being talked about so freely in someone else's book, but each to her or his own.

Normally I ignore things like introductions, prefaces, prologues, author's notes, acknowledgements and dedications as well as chapter quotes and so on in books, but in this case I actually went looking for an intro or a note to see if there was anything mentioned about this: permissions and name changes, but there was not, so there was no information to be had on this topic.

I was once again disappointed here (as I have been in other books from academically inclined authors) to discover that the book is evidently formatted as a print book, with what I call 'academic margins' - meaning the margin is excessive - an inch or more (and even greater at the bottom of the page). I have to ask when are writers and publishers going to respect the only entity on the planet that is actively and dedicatedly trying to combat climate change: trees?

The text on each page occupies only fifty percent of the page. No one wants to see the entire page covered in text of course, but if this book had margins even half the existing size, and the text had not been quite so generously-spaced, the book could well have been maybe half as long, and thereby slaughtered fifty percent fewer trees. Writers and publishers need to think seriously about this, because it matters even in an ebook, which requires more energy to store, retrieve and transmit when it’s longer.

One more curiosity! When I went to look up the author at her professional page on the University web site, I found two links and each seemed to link to a different people! I think it’s really the same person but the two photos look so different: one is a blond, the other much darker haired. Her professional history though is impressive. This is one hard-working doctor!

Despite some issues I had with it, I liked this book a lot. I think it's important and useful, and I recommend it for anyone interested in what those inflicted with cancer go through and what the options are for combatting this awful disease which, despite its virulence, is slowly succumbing to technology and medical science - and to the wisdom and dedication of healthcare professionals like this one. This is a worthy read.