‘From cancer doctor to cancer patient and back again’

Born in St Gallen, Pamela Munster recounts her battle against cancer in a poignant book published in 2018. A world-renowned oncologist, she has been working in San Francisco for 15 years - and now feels very much at home there. “I didn't choose California, California chose me,” Munster says. When she was appointed by the University of San Francisco, she already had an impressive career as an oncologist behind her. She trained in medicine in Bern, and had been practising for several years in Florida, having previously spent time in Indiana and Manhattan, which left a “trace of urban America” in her. What about the Bay Area, with its mists and Mediterranean climate? That had “never been in her plans,” she says. But never say never. And the challenge in a job that combines her two passions - research and patient care – motivates her. In San Francisco, she discovered that fate had a stroke of bad luck in store for her. In 2012, at the age of 48, Munster was diagnosed with...