The Pink Lady Gets a Wake up Call

In 2016, author Nicki Ells is fulfilling her calling. She’s teaching English at a public high school. But halfway through the academic year, Ells feels a change within herself, a change in her body that signals something is wrong.


In The Pink Lady Gets a Wake Up Call, she tells her story through a series of previously published blog posts, some of which are pure academia, some conjecture, and some are just whimsical as Ells takes a break from worrisome thinking and fighting with her body.


Beginning in 2016, she shares her thoughts on a variety of topics including the education system, the health system, her trials, and her tribulations. Ells also reveals the research she conducted about her disease and how it all works and doesn’t work, and she talks about support groups and the pharmaceutical game. 


This memoir chronicles the journey of this public-school, creative writing teacher as she takes an in-class, daily activity of teaching teens and turns it into a personal log of symptoms and experiences. Ells narrates how the pain, inability to cope, and misdiagnosis’, which skewed any normalcy, were now in charge.