I was not born a patient person. I want immediate responses and action. I hate waiting for things to unfold. I feel uneasy when I can’t visualize the desired end-result early in a process. I’m not a procrastinator – I am a NOW person.

This personality trait has upsides, but it also created a ton of additional stress while I navigated my medical mystery. It continues to challenge me as I work through treatment and healing following my pemphigus diagnosis.

Learning Patience Through Baking

I recently turned to baking as a way of practicing and cultivating patience. While I thoroughly enjoy eating baked goods, I have never enjoyed the process of baking. I actually kind of hate it.

Baking is fussy and time consuming.

It has loads of rules and strict measuring. It’s messy – flour and sugar get everywhere! If you do something out of order, calamity ensues. There are lots of steps that put the process on pause – rising, softening, cooling, setting, chilling overnight. You can mix all your ingredients correctly, but something outside your control – like too much humidity in the air – can totally ruin your bake. And the clean up – so many bowls, beaters, measuring spoons and spatulas covered with sticky, sugary messes.

If you want to be a proficient baker, you have to be exacting and PATIENT. You have to be willing to slow down, stop, and wait for the science and magic to happen. And sometimes, you have to accept failure. Cakes fall – just like a treatment for an illness might not work.

So, you see – baking is a great way to learn patience skills that can be applied to other challenges in life. The added perk is that you usually end up with yummy things to eat!

Putting Patience Into Practice with Pemphigus

My pemphigus diagnosis has forced me to become more patient. I don’t have any other choice.

• Getting diagnosed correctly took almost a year and a half and eleven different doctors. I was diagnosed with at least four incorrect illnesses before the direct immunofluorescence biopsy confirmed pemphigus.
• I had long waits to see most specialists, including a six month wait to see rheumatology. It took over a year to find my doctor at UNC.
• Other than steroids, none of the medications or treatments that help pemphigus are fast acting. I won’t know if the rituximab worked for 6-8 weeks. Other drugs I tried (hydroxychloroquine, colchicine, Otezla) all took weeks or months of trial to determine that they didn’t work.
• Healing of my erosions and ulcers is a slow process. You can’t recover overnight from over a year of deep, painful wounds. These hurts will leave scars that may never go away.
• Set-backs and failures are inevitable. I know I am going to have good days ahead, but there are also going to be hard days and things that don’t work.
• There isn’t a finish line. Pemphigus is something that I’ll carry for the rest of my days. Hopefully most of the time, the load will be light, but there are no guarantees.
• And just like a perfectly-made pastry at the end of a complicated recipe – remission is an amazing and possible outcome for me!

That’s just like baking, right!?

Today’s Lesson in Patience

Today’s lesson in patience was baking a Chocolate Peppermint Cake Roll for Christmas. It involved separating eggs, two fully separate mixing processes (stand mixer and hand mixer), lots of measuring, use of greased and floured parchment paper, rolling a delicate, hot sheet-cake into a spiral, cooling time, crushing peppermint candies, making cream cheese filling, and then the final roll-up where you hope and pray the cake doesn’t completely fall apart in pieces! It was many, many steps and many, many rules. It took all day to make (with many pauses for softening, baking, cooling).

But, in the end it’s beautiful! And hopefully the beauty translates to deliciousness!

Some of the Many Steps of Making a Cake Roll!

There was sifting dry ingredients, whipping egg whites to soft peaks, folding the chocolate batter into the egg whites, baking the sponge in a jellyroll pan, rolling and cooling the sponge before filling, and so many dishes to wash!

I won’t taste the cake roll today… or tomorrow. It probably won’t even come out until it’s served as the dessert for our Christmas dinner. For now, it’s being tucked away in the freezer, and I’ll patiently await the sweet outcome.