Despite Cancer, Women Draw Strength From Making Themselves Look Good

Somewhere between the diagnosis -- ovarian cancer -- and the chemo, Pam Haggerty gave up on looking good. The 58-year-old retired nurse from Novi, Mich., stopped wearing makeup, something she'd loved since she was a teen and something she never left the house without. Then again, aside from doctor appointments, she wasn't leaving the house much, anyway. People close to her worried that she was giving up on more than her appearance.

"We were just shocked," says her sister, Cyndi Scott. "She was, of course, going through this traumatic treatment. It seemed to affect her inside and out. ... She looked so horribly sick."

When a Karmanos Cancer Center social worker suggested a Look Good ... Feel Better seminar -- a program designed to teach cancer patients how to apply makeup, style wigs and wrap turbans -- last month, Haggerty was skeptical.

But she went anyway and, she says, "walked out of there feeling stronger and feeling like I didn't have to give up looking and feeling attractive just because I was fighting cancer.

"I felt better about myself, just going out in public. I felt more attractive. I felt like putting that energy into how I looked helped me to feel stronger. ...

"There's something about taking that power back and saying, 'I'm still a woman and I'm strong,' and going out in the world and looking like a woman and not looking like so much a victim of an illness."