“BACK TO LIFE: Transformation Through Back Surgery” by Pamela Douglas
More than half a million back surgeries are performed each year. For anyone who has ever faced debilitating illness or surgery, Pamela Douglas shows in her new book how traumatic experience can awaken deep potential, talent and creativity.
Pamela’s book, BACK TO LIFE: A Journey of Transformation through Back Surgery, explores the psychological, emotional and spiritual stages of preparation, hospitalization, and recovery from spine surgery.
In 2005, Pamela, an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, faced the challenge of her life. Years after a diagnosis of scoliosis — and after decades she spent working, exercising, gardening, having a baby and raising a family — doctors told her she would need to undergo major, life-threatening spine surgery.
After searching her soul, Pamela took six months out of her busy life as a television writer and professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California for the preparation, surgery and recovery. The experience, which could have left her paralyzed, instead led her to personal discovery.
Through two weeks in the hospital and many more confined to a bed, Pamela found inner strength and the depth of love and support from her family that she did not know she had. She had time to ask herself fundamental questions about her life. When she finally was able to once again walk, with steel rods and screws supporting her spine, she discovered joy in the simple gift of restored mobility.
“I wrote this book to let others, who might be living in pain or going through any physical challenge, see how day-to-day, a person can endure and finally even flourish,” Pamela says.
An award-winning writer of television drama, Pamela details her experiences in journal form through brief entries written as she was going through surgery and recovery. BACK TO LIFE takes the reader into the immediacy of the moment and through the transformational power of an experience far beyond surgery.
“It’s about the process of having the courage to go through surgery or any extreme healing process, and to know that there is more to you than the pain or whatever is happening in the body at that time,” Pamela says. “For me, it was a life-changing experience and, ultimately, a great one.”
About the Author
Pamela Douglas is an award-winning writer with numerous credits in television drama, and also a fine artist.
In May 2005, facing a degenerative spinal disease that threatened to leave her paralyzed, Pamela underwent major surgery. Her decision and the long recovery that followed inspired her to write BACK TO LIFE: A Journey of Transformation through Back Surgery. Written in journal form as she was going through surgery and recovery, the book takes the reader into the immediacy of the moment and through the transformational power of an experience far beyond surgery.
Pamela is also the author of Writing the TV Drama Series (Michael Wiese Productions 2007). The second edition has been translated into many languages. With a third edition due out in 2011, it is considered the premier book on the subject. Pamela has been honored with the Humanitas Prize for Between Mother and Daughter (CBS), an original drama that also won a nomination for the Writers Guild Award. Multiple Emmy nominations and awards, as well as awards from American Women in Radio and Television, have gone to other dramas she has written. Pamela has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America (West) and is a tenured professor in the screenwriting division of the School of Cinematic Arts of the University of Southern California.
My Review
Life is challenging enough, between lack of money, juggling a family and job – and then for Pamela Douglas, having a life altering back injury/surgery. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have such a scary situation affect not only my life, but the lives of my family as well.
In her book, Douglas does an amazing job of allowing you to basically “read her journal” and discover all of her thoughts/feelings of someone that would eventually undergo one of the most dangerous surgeries known. An inspiratonal book that that I would recommend to not just those who are facing back surgery but to anyone who is facing major surgery of any kind and their families and friends. The book provides an excellent road map of both the physical process and the inner process Pam Douglas experienced.
As one review wrote, “Filled with warmth, humor, and humanity, this story of one woman’s experience with frightening major surgery will both comfort and entertain you.” The story is not one that you will want to put down, and is something you will definitely want to share with someone undergoing any type of medical illness or bump in their lives.
To learn more about Pamela Douglas, you can visit her website here, or you can purchase her book on Amazon.
Post published by Melissa Roach, our new Product Review & Giveaway Specialist.
Melissa is a Full Time Mom & Blogger HERE (please check out her blog!)
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
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