A Thriver’s Story: Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer
Episode Summary
In this deeply personal episode of The Cancer Project Podcast, host David Raubach sits down with Tara Green, the founder and executive director of Tenaciously Teal, a nonprofit organization based in Oklahoma City that provides care packs and wrap-around support to cancer patients across the country. Tara’s path to founding Tenaciously Teal began long before her diagnosis—she spent six years as a child welfare social worker in Oklahoma, a career that honed her instincts for seeing need and stepping into it. Her empathy, developed through years of knocking on strangers’ doors during some of the hardest moments of their lives, would become the foundation for everything she built after cancer.
Tara was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in 2012 after years of persistent, worsening pain that was repeatedly dismissed or misdiagnosed by physicians. Her diagnosis came only after she sought out a fourth medical opinion—a gynecological specialist, Dr. Parikh—who performed a laparoscopic surgery and discovered a tumor. She was referred to OU Stevenson, at the time home to the only gynecological oncologist in Oklahoma, where she underwent an eight-hour debulking surgery followed by sixteen months of chemotherapy: six months of intensive treatment and ten months of maintenance therapy. During that time, Tara participated in clinical trials whose protocols have since become standard of care for ovarian cancer patients.
What makes Tara’s story remarkable is not just that she survived a grim prognosis—her oncologist told her plainly that she would die from the disease—but that she began building Tenaciously Teal while still in treatment. Walking the hospital hallways post-surgery to regain strength, she noticed patients on the cancer floor sitting alone day after day. She started giving away flower arrangements sent to her own room and eventually assembled her first care pack for a woman named Judy, a stranger sitting just outside her room with no visitors. That first pack contained fuzzy socks, ChapStick, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, and green tea—with a handwritten note tucked inside. From that single gesture, Tenaciously Teal has grown to distribute nearly 6,000 care packs per year and has delivered more than 54,000 total, reaching treatment centers across Oklahoma and patients nationwide.
Beyond care packs, Tenaciously Teal has developed signature programs that address the emotional and psychological dimensions of cancer treatment. The organization’s trademarked Brave Shave program gives patients the choice to shave their head before chemotherapy causes hair to fall out in clumps, framing the experience as an act of empowerment rather than loss. Professional makeup, photography, and a supportive circle of friends and family turn what would otherwise be a traumatic moment into one of agency and celebration. Tara also hosts an annual gala called Care Box and Cocktails, featuring a runway fashion show where cancer patients and survivors walk to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters—an event David calls one of the highlights of Oklahoma City’s charity calendar.
Throughout the conversation, Tara and David explore the emotional terrain that cancer patients rarely discuss publicly: the way laughter and gratitude can coexist with suffering, the strange disorientation of survivorship when the treatment schedule disappears, and the profound impact of small acts of kindness from strangers. Tara describes finding joy by focusing on fuzzy socks and a warm blanket from her sickbed, the way a friend watching Duck Dynasty and painting her nails brought light into dark days, and the Aurora—a woman at Parkland Health in Dallas—who wept and hugged her upon receiving a care pack just minutes after learning her cancer had spread to her lungs and liver. These moments, Tara says, are what keep her going through the administrative grind of running a nonprofit.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Seek a Specialist, Not Just a Second Opinion: Tara saw four different physicians before receiving her ovarian cancer diagnosis. She emphasizes that getting a referral to a specialist in your specific concern—not whoever delivered your doctor’s children—can be the difference between years of missed diagnosis and timely treatment.
- Debulking Surgery for Ovarian Cancer: Tara underwent an intensive eight-hour procedure designed to remove as much cancerous tissue as possible, improving a patient’s odds of survival and the effectiveness of subsequent chemotherapy.
- Sixteen Months of Chemotherapy: Tara’s treatment consisted of six months of intensive chemo followed by ten months of maintenance therapy. She also participated in clinical trials whose protocols have since become standard of care for ovarian cancer.
- The Mental Battle of Treatment: Beyond the physical toll, Tara describes managing a schedule of chemo, blood draws, and recovery while simultaneously supporting family and friends who were grieving her diagnosis. She used faith, gratitude journaling, and micro-goals—like walking around the couch once—to endure.
- Gratitude as a Survival Tool: On her worst days, Tara began with the smallest things she could feel grateful for—warm fuzzy socks, a blanket, a friend’s phone call—and let that practice expand outward until the weight of the day felt lighter.
- Tenaciously Teal Care Packs: Started with a single pack for a woman named Judy, the program has now distributed more than 54,000 care packs containing practical items like fuzzy socks, ChapStick, and tea—each one accompanied by a handwritten note. Packs are mailed nationwide and delivered to treatment centers across Oklahoma.
- Brave Shave Program: Tenaciously Teal’s trademarked program gives patients the option to proactively shave their head before hair loss begins, turning a traumatic inevitability into a moment of empowerment, choice, and community support with professional makeup and photography included.
- Survivorship’s Hidden Challenges: When treatment ends, many patients experience a disorienting loss of structure and a gradual withdrawal of social support. Tara describes the period as a “wandering feeling” as the rigid chemo schedule disappears and people around you begin returning to normal life.
- Laughter as Medicine: Tara and David discuss how important it is for caregivers to allow levity—a meme, a joke, a favorite TV show like Duck Dynasty—because cancer patients don’t want to be surrounded by constant solemnity. Humor creates light in genuinely dark moments.
- How to Support a Cancer Patient: Tara’s advice: don’t let fear of saying or doing the wrong thing paralyze you into doing nothing. Show up. Do the laundry, take the dog to daycare, send a gift card. Consistency in small acts matters more than grand gestures.
- Care Box and Cocktails Gala: Tenaciously Teal’s annual fundraising event features a runway fashion show where cancer patients and survivors are styled, made up, and celebrated by a packed crowd—an event that has become one of Oklahoma City’s signature charity experiences.
- Community Care Pack Parties: Businesses, nonprofits, and community groups can host care pack assembly events with Tenaciously Teal. More than 2,000 fuzzy socks were collected by a single FFA chapter in Oologah, Oklahoma—illustrating how broad the community’s reach has become.
Tara Green’s story is a masterclass in turning suffering into purpose. She went from Googling “pre-cancerous conditions” on her couch after a string of career rejections, to waking up from surgery to hear she had cancer, to walking hospital hallways post-op looking for strangers who needed a flower arrangement or a care pack with a handwritten note—and eventually to building an organization that has touched more than 54,000 lives. If you or someone you know is in active treatment, request a free Care Pack at tteal.org. If you want to join the fight, consider hosting a Care Pack Party, sponsoring the annual gala, or becoming a Care Crew member for as little as $10 a month. And if Tara’s story moved you, share this episode—because every Judy sitting alone in a chemo chair deserves to know somebody noticed.
Full Transcript
Read Full Transcript
David Raubach: I want to thank you for joining us on today’s episode of The Cancer Project Podcast. We’re really privileged to have Tara Green with us—the executive director, founder, president, CEO, you said janitor, all of the above—of Tenaciously Teal, which is a fantastic organization that provides care packs and other services to patients going through cancer treatment. And Tara herself is a cancer survivor, so we’re really excited to learn more about Tenaciously Teal and talk to Tara about her experience and her story. Tara, thank you for joining us.
Tara Green: Thank you so much for having me.
David Raubach: Tell us just in terms of getting to know you—where did you grow up? Who is Tara the person before your experience with cancer?
Tara Green: Well, I grew up as a pastor’s kid, so I moved around a lot. I came to Oklahoma City in 2003 for college—that was a little bit of a culture shock. I was in San Diego for junior high, high school, and a couple years of college, and then I transferred to Southern Nazarene here. I graduated, fell in love with the city, and have been here ever since.
David Raubach: What did you study?
Tara Green: I got my degree in social work. I later went to OU and got my master’s in social work, and then started my career as a child welfare worker. I did six years in the field and helped formalize their prevention program—keeping kids in the home and out of custody. Later I moved into policy and training for that program, pre-cancer.
David Raubach: So you were working for the state. Now I believe 2012 is when you got diagnosed. Talk about everything that happened around the diagnosis—how you figured out you had cancer and what treatments were like, because I know that impacted your decision to start Tenaciously Teal.
Tara Green: Yeah, absolutely. I had applied for a lot of different promotions and had been told no—I think about eight interviews—and a girl can only be told no so many times. That eighth rejection, I said, “Okay, if I can’t get my career right, I’m going to get my health right.” Because I had been to the doctor, complained about pain, something just didn’t seem right, and I was kind of told I had cysts and everything was fine. But it kept getting more painful. When I had that last devastating no, I took a week off, sat on my couch, and started Googling pre-cancerous conditions. I found a doctor—Dr. Parikh—and the stars aligned for him to be concerned enough that we did a laparoscopic surgery. When I came out, he told me it was a tumor.
David Raubach: When you came out of surgery—literally on the table, waking up?
Tara Green: Yeah, I was kind of waking up from surgery and he just broke the news. At that point there was still a glimmer of hope that it might be benign, and my family held on to that. But I remember thinking, “No. It’s not.” I just kind of started preparing myself in my head.
David Raubach: Is there anything, maybe as advice for women hearing this, that you would have done differently from a health or screening standpoint?
Tara Green: Dr. Parikh was my fourth opinion, so I always encourage people to get second opinions. I initially trusted my primary care physician and his referrals—I was about 24 when I first got referred for a laparoscopic surgery. My wish in retrospect was that I would have questioned the referral. He referred me to the doctor who delivered his children, and in hindsight I didn’t need to go to a doctor who delivered babies. I needed to go to a specialist. I was having very specific concerns not related to having a child.
David Raubach: I think that’s something we talk a lot about at the Proton Center—the importance of getting a second or third opinion. Cancer treatment isn’t a simple playbook. It’s as much of an art as a science. A surgeon may recommend surgery, a radiation oncologist may recommend radiation. So what happened after Dr. Parikh told you it was a tumor?
Tara Green: I was referred to OU Stevenson because at the time they had the only gynecological oncologist in the state. I was scheduled for a really intensive debulking surgery—where they try to get as much cancer out of you as possible to give you the best chance of survival. It was a long eight-hour surgery, grueling, very difficult recovery. Then I did 16 months of chemo: six months of intensive chemo and ten months of maintenance. I was on some clinical trials that are now standard of care for women fighting ovarian cancer.
David Raubach: Describe chemotherapy for somebody that has not been through it.
Tara Green: It’s poison. I literally thought I was dying the first round. I just remember being on the ground, suffering, and I’m pretty tough—my friends and family would say I have a high pain tolerance. That’s why I was able to live with that pain for so long. But chemo was so hard. I remember thinking after that first time, “I have to do 15 more months of this? That’s not possible.” And it became one day at a time, then an hour, then moments and minutes at a time.
David Raubach: I remember having Shannon Miller, the Olympic gymnast, on as a guest. She went through chemotherapy for ovarian cancer and talked about setting goals that were achievable—she said one of her goals was just to walk around the living room table. Did you find yourself doing something similar?
Tara Green: I’ve always been a fan of Shannon Miller and I’ve gotten to meet her too. I did the same thing—how many times could I walk around the couch that day? Getting outside and sitting in the sun, doing a little journaling, reading a devotion. Those were the wins.
David Raubach: Talk about the mental aspect, because there’s a physical toll but there’s also a mental toll.
Tara Green: You’re trying to overcome the physical mentally, but you’re also dealing with people who are grieving your diagnosis and worried you’re not going to make it. My faith was primary for me—a lot of prayer. And then just being grateful for tiny things. I remember one day being so sick, and I started looking around my room from my bed. I saw these beautiful fuzzy socks I had on that brought me joy. I thought, “Thank you, God, that I have warm feet right now.” And then I had this blanket, and this bed, and family calling me. I remember being overwhelmed with gratefulness that started with socks. When you focus on what you have to be grateful for, even down to the little things, you can be overwhelmed by the goodness of life, and those little things help you conquer the big things like cancer.
David Raubach: What were some specific things your support system did that were meaningful? I’m asking in the context of people who have family members going through cancer and are wondering how to help.
Tara Green: I tell people: do something. Don’t let the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing paralyze you. One friend would not take no for an answer on doing my laundry. Another friend took my dog to doggy daycare on chemo days so he was tired and snuggly when I got home. People brought food. Something like a gift card would be great too. But a lot of it is just knowing somebody’s there—a text, a message, even a funny meme. Doing something that makes someone laugh in those situations just helps bring light into a dark place.
David Raubach: I really like that you brought up laughter. It’s okay to smile even in a dark journey. What you actually need sometimes is that reprieve—a smile, a laugh, a joke.
Tara Green: Duck Dynasty was big when I was going through chemo. My friend would come over when it was on, we would laugh, she’d paint my nails—and it’s still an inside joke between us. It brought a lot of joy on some hard days.
David Raubach: Were there points where you had to really face the reality of death? You had Stage 4 cancer.
Tara Green: Absolutely. My oncologist sat across from me and said, “You’re going to die from this disease.” It was a very grim diagnosis. I got down to about 90 pounds. I remember FaceTiming my best friend from high school and when she picked up she just started crying when she saw me—and I remember that being a really poignant moment. I’ve been successful in not spiraling into that darkness in survivorship because I try to focus on joy and light. That’s the opposite of my goal if I fixate on dying.
David Raubach: Talk about survivorship—the first six months or year after treatment ends, with follow-up scans and the question of whether the cancer is back.
Tara Green: It’s like a wandering feeling. Chemo is so regimented—you’re a Tuesday/Wednesday chemo person, then sick for a few days. And then miraculously I was declared cancer-free, and suddenly I’m not on a treatment schedule anymore. Now you’re thinking: is the cancer going to come back, am I fully healed? And the people who showed up during treatment kind of check that box and move on—which is a normal human thing. But you’re suddenly a lot more alone. It’s like, I guess I’ll go back to work. Pack a lunch. What do I do?
David Raubach: Let’s talk about Tenaciously Teal. My understanding is the origination was you just started going and visiting people going through chemotherapy. How did it start?
Tara Green: The catalyst was recovery from the debulking surgery. The next day they told me I had to start walking the halls to get stronger to go home, and this was right before Christmas. I was motivated to get home to my family—I had plane tickets to Oregon. So I was walking the halls, and I noticed people who were just by themselves day after day. The guy next door was there alone every single day. Growing up as a pastor’s kid and having six years of child welfare work, I was comfortable having hard conversations. It stirred in my heart to go talk to him. I just wanted him to know that somebody noticed and somebody cared.
David Raubach: So from there, how did it evolve?
Tara Green: I also had all these flowers people had sent me after surgery, and I started giving those away. I noticed immediately how much that just brought heart-to-heart care—when you’re just like, “Hey, I just want to give you something.” Then as I went through treatment, there were 60 chairs in the chemo room, all full. I saw more of the same: people by themselves who reminded me of my child welfare clients, people who were really struggling. I wanted to do something tangible. That’s where the care packs evolved. The very first one was for a woman named Judy, right outside my room—an older lady, by herself. I’ll never forget her eyes and her smile and her surprise. I was carting around my IV pole. The first pack had fuzzy socks, ChapStick, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, and green tea—and a handwritten note in each one.
David Raubach: At what point did you think this could become something you do full-time or on a regular basis?
Tara Green: It evolved gradually. After I was declared cancer-free I got that promotion, went to state office, and I thought that chapter was over. But then I just kept thinking about the Judys and the guy on the OU floor after my surgery who got the first flower arrangement. I thought: if I don’t, who will? So I kept going back to the chemo room. Social workers at the cancer center started asking if I’d thought about filling more gaps—like gas cards just for people to get to treatment. I kept seeing needs and stepping into them.
David Raubach: Where did the name Tenaciously Teal come from?
Tara Green: Teal is the color for ovarian cancer awareness, and I had a little blog called Tenaciously Teal to keep people updated on what was going on with me. When I went to formalize it, I tried to think of other names—came up with some pretty dumb ones—and my best friend finally just said, “Tara, you’re an idiot. It has to be Tenaciously Teal.” And I thought, really? Okay. That’s why I’m the one spelling it for people all the time now.
David Raubach: Tell me about the annual gala—Care Box and Cocktails—and especially the fashion show. I’ve been a few times and it’s an amazing event.
Tara Green: We started with 50 people in a house in downtown OKC. The next year we added a fashion show, because we do empowerment shoots and Brave Shaves for women—so a fashion show was a natural fit. From the very beginning, there was so much joy and empowerment. Women were coming up and saying, “I haven’t felt beautiful in so long” or “My husband looked at me differently tonight.” We were there to raise money for care boxes and financial assistance, but we ended up accomplishing so much more by putting these women in beautiful clothes, doing their makeup, cheering for them. When that fashion show hits, everybody in the crowd is their biggest fan. It’s really cool.
David Raubach: Tell me about the Brave Shave program.
Tara Green: We trademarked Brave Shave. It’s an opportunity for women to face hair loss with courage and choice. A lot of people don’t realize how fast hair loss happens—within the first two weeks, and you’re already bombarded by so many things. But you have a choice in how you lose your hair. We support you, we let your friends and family come, we do professional makeup and photography. My mom is a breast cancer survivor, so this is personal for me too. Every time someone comes in a little defeated and then walks out, the energy just shifts. They feel lighter and empowered.
David Raubach: For those listening who want to support Tenaciously Teal—how can they get involved?
Tara Green: Our Care Box and Cocktails gala is coming up July 25th at the Criterion—tickets go on sale March 15th. If they’re interested in hosting a Care Pack Party, they can go to tteal.org. We always need groups to do collection drives—Oologah FFA just collected over 2,000 fuzzy socks. We need sponsorships for the gala, and we just rolled out a Care Crew program where $10 a month sponsors the shipping of one care pack. It shows up on someone’s door in a teal package maybe exactly when they need to be reminded that somebody cares.
David Raubach: And if somebody watching is going through cancer themselves and wants to receive a care pack?
Tara Green: They can go to our homepage at tteal.org and request a Care Pack. We’ll write their name on a little card inside and mail it to them. And I want to be clear—we want people to ask. We just had a company sponsor a thousand care packs, so we have them ready to get out to the people who need that reminder. Even people who have great support systems—when that little thing showed up on my door on the right day at the right time, it meant a lot. It’s amazing how much a gift from a stranger can impact you because it’s so unexpected.
David Raubach: Well, thank you so much, Tara. I really appreciate your time today. This has been amazing.
Tara Green: Thank you. It was awesome.
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