Diagnosis and how you feel about it

For me, getting LADA is life changing, in a very bad way. I’ve been scrimping and saving for years to get enough money to open a bakery. I was about two years away from having enough. I just got the diagnosis a couple of weeks ago. It’s not just having a nasty disease (I already have Psoriatic Arthritis, POF, etc), but it’s also the end of my dreams. And of course, I have family members trying to make me feel better by saying things like “why can’t you have a bakery, just don’t eat anything you make…”. Yeah, kind of hard to develop recipes and do quality control without eating anything. Maybe I won’t feel as bad in a few months, but right now I just keep crying.

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Candice, I am so sorry that you are crying and that the bakery dream did not work out. I can see how you would have to taste your recipes, there is no way around that except to have someone else taste for you…but that is probably not part of your dream. I agree LADA is very life changing in my opinion too. Thank you for answering my post.

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I sincerely hope you will feel much better in a few months, or even a few weeks. Sometimes these things strike us at first as insurmountable setbacks, but once the dust settles, we see that they are not necessarily. Maybe look at it not as the end of your dreams but as the realignment of your dreams. Keep this little thought in mind: You were diagnosed with LADA; your future customers weren’t.

You will need to watch your carbs, but your customers don’t have to. You still have your passion for baking and your desire to please your customers with that baking – I assume it wasn’t all to be for your own consumption :grin: – so I say go for it! You don’t need to eat a whole cupcake or a whole slice of pie or a whole dinner roll to do quality control. Once your bulk recipes are fine-tuned, you may not need to taste at all. Pro chefs take little tastes from little spoons. In my experience, those tiny amounts of food aren’t likely to mess up anyone’s diabetes. And you could even develop a sideline of diabetes-friendly goodies, giving you an edge over your competition.

Here’s something to keep in mind as well. Grant Achatz is an award-winning Chicago chef considered one of the leaders of progressive cuisine. When he was 33 and head chef at Alinea in Chicago, which Gourmet magazine ranked the best restaurant in America, he was diagnosed with late-stage cancer of the mouth. Heavy-duty chemo and radiation completely erased his ability to taste. But, with his staff tasting for him, he kept cooking and developing recipes and winning awards. (There was no guarantee he would ever regain his taste, but he eventually did.) I have watched cooking competitions where Michelin-starred chefs who have seafood allergies cook a dish containing seafood; they may or may not have another contestant taste it, and they’ve been known to win their round. Sam Talbot is a Manhattan chef and a Top Chef finalist and also has Type 1. It doesn’t have to mean the end of a dream.

I was trained as a chef but later lost much of my ability to smell and therefore to taste. (Not at all the same as the implications of LADA, I know!) The restaurant world wasn’t really for me anyway and I went into another line of work, but I still love to cook for my partner and for our friends and for community potlucks and things. I can’t smell my cakes in the oven or the garlic in the pan, and often I need to ask my partner to taste something, does it need more of this or more of that, but when everything’s on the table everybody says I’m an amazing cook. The people I cook for are none the wiser. They are like your future customers.

Diabetes of any kind is a huge challenge, but you obviously have an equally huge passion for baking. Despite your recent diagnosis, you still know how to bake. And you still love baking. And you will find ways to enjoy yourself what you bake. But remember your paying customers don’t need to know any of that. They just want to buy and enjoy the goodies you want to make for them.

[Sorry for the long digression, everybody.]

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Thank you for the hopeful words. I screenshotted them, and I’ll use them to cheer myself up if I feel down. It means a lot that you took so much time to reach out to me.

Candice

This is a great topic and there are such interesting responses. I have diabetes and I am not alone. And my wife would not let me stop baking for her.

I admit, diabetes is just one of my problems. But I also think that life is how you react to it. I made a batch of Oatmeal Cherry Cookies with brown sugar and cinnamon. My wife ate her cookie with ice cream. I nibbled on a cookie and used some insulin. You just keep going.

I did not like a large plate of cookies laying around, so I gave some to my brother’s wife. She enjoyed them. Problem solved.

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I think the best way I can describe how I feel is that it’s a head an heart thing. In my head I know I have a disease or condition but in my heart I have never felt like I have a disease or disability. I remember the first time I saw diabetes being referred to as a disability on a tv add encouraging employers to make allowances for employees with disabilities and I felt a bit shocked! I think because I have had it since I was 8 that it is such a part of who I am and I don’t see myself as sick or highly restricted, which is I suppose what I associate with disease and disability. But it is a giant pain in the butt sometimes! I wonder if this perspective would change if I developed complications, probably.

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I was dx’d at age 28 in 1983 and the feeling of disbelief took a few years to wear off. The “I can’t believe I have to do this” while sticking a hypo in my leg, combined with “This isn’t ever going to stop!” That wears off and it gets to be routine. Well, except for the hypos–that used to be much more difficult and unpredictable back in the old R/NPH, Eat Now Or Die era. I still resent it when that happens but it used to be a lot worse. Well, except for that one really inexplicable, prolonged and nasty one I had while staying at a friend’s house a week or so ago. Trying to explain what that’s all about, that it’s the medication not the disease that’s giving you the hardest time, and why you can’t read the menu at the breakfast restaurant because of the flashbulb effect in your eyes, ugh. Dwelling on it just makes me more pissed off. So mostly I don’t.

But I can’t say I’m ever not aware of it. It just impinges on so many things throughout the day. The weather, for instance. What does the weather have to do with it? Well, I bike commute, except when it’s rainy, so my first insulin decision of the day depends on checking the weather to see if I need to allow for exercise so I don’t get to work with a low. Or pre-bolusing for lunch, and then an unscheduled meeting crops up just as my BG is starting to drop. Etc etc etc.

Mostly I do this stuff automatically, but recently a co-worker who is curious about the whole thing started asking questions, and as I described all the little micro-decisions and calculations I’m going through during the day her eyes went wide–“I had no idea it was that complicated!”–and that kind of brought it home to me, too. Of course as I’ve gotten into my 60s all my contemporaries now have their own chronic health problems. Welcome to my world, guys!

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Even though this is a rare discussion in my life, I enjoy when it happens. Not enjoy, like celebrate, but enjoy as it stimulates and encourages me. It validates my personal view of what it takes to live well with diabetes and if someone else can even glimpse my real life, it’s affirming. I don’t actively seek this affirmation and I’m surprised when the rare person, the curious person, takes enough trouble to appreciate what I’m up against every day. And it also reminds me that I can play this special role for other people!

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