Tie One On

After retiring from TWA and American Airlines, Pamela moved from the Midwest, where she had lived for more than half her life, back to the West Coast. She had just started writing her award-winning blog, Portland Firefly, a few months before her March 2009 diagnosis of Primary Peritoneal Carcinoma, a rare type of aggressive ovarian cancer. She was the keynote speaker for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life Survivors Luncheon and is a Teal Ambassador for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. A featured speaker on the panel of Survivors Teaching Students through the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Oregon and Southwestern Washington, she makes it a priority to attend the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance Conference annually in Washington, D.C., where she encourages ovarian cancer legislation, research and awareness funding by our senators and representatives.

Pamela's second book, HOW CAN I HAVE OVARIAN CANCER? I DON'T HAVE ANY OVARIES! will be published next year. It chronicles her odyssey through the maze of symptoms, diagnosis, chemotherapy, recurrences, and living with a life-draining disease in the hopes of helping others through this time in their lives.

After a year of chemotherapy and 16 months of wearing headscarves, I have learned many ways to cover my head. During that time, strangers would frequently stop me and comment on how beautiful my turban-tied scarf looked. I didn't think too much of it until the women at my support group asked me to show them how I had tied my scarf. It was then that I decided that maybe an instructional book would be helpful to those of us who have chemotherapy and its unwanted side effects as an ongoing part of our lives. I hope that this book will give you confidence in creating a beautiful way to wear your chemotherapy side-effects with flair, grace and confidence.