From nurse to cookie maker

Injury prompts nurse to start own cookie business

When life handed Joannie White lemons, she made cookies.

The former nurse went from helping incapacitated people to being helpless herself for several months after a fall off a chair in her home. Although the injury to her wrist occurred nearly a year ago, she still remembers the very moment it happened. Since then, she's been trying to adjust to her permanent injuries.

"I had been a nurse for several years, since the '60s," said White, an upbeat lady with an affable nurse's disposition. "I guess it pretty much was what I had always done. It was on my day off that I decided I was behind on the housework and I stood on a chair with wheels on it and took a real nasty fall. I fractured my wrist and it was pretty severe, I opted for closed reduction, which is not surgery, but a rather painful manipulation to set the bones. I had to have two of those and two different casts."

During the castings, White's shoulder froze and she had several other problems with her body. Then she received the biggest blow yet: she had to quit work permanently because she could no longer lift patients into their beds.

"Depressed? Well, I didn't have a paycheck. It was awful," she said. "I was heading down that highway, and on top of it I had to go through two different pain managements, and the pain wouldn't stop. But I did not want to become a couch potato and sit and take meds all day."

White's husband, Paul, a local real estate agent, suggested that she bake some cookies he could give to his clients. Although it would require some use of her injured wrist, baking was something White enjoyed doing and it was a low-stress activity that would keep her busy.

"I thought, I could make some cookies in the shape of a house, and I tried to do it with one hand," she said. "I remembered I had lots of recipes, and found some icing. Years ago, I used to decorate icing with a toothpick, and I happened to find some paint brushes and food coloring. If I did it just right, it would become a canvas. So that's what I started to do. I painted with sugar."

White began making cookies for all occasions for her husband as well as friends. People told her she should go into business for herself, but she still considered it to be a temporary pastime.

"Being a nurse, I didn't have a clue about cookies. It was just something to kill the time," she said. "I didn't know what was going to happen down the road. I just knew it took my mind off myself and it took my mind off my pain. I would just look at something and think, that would look good on a cookie."

After obtaining a business license and food permit, White looked into opening her own cookie design business, but she found that bakeries are expensive to open and operate. She was offered an opportunity to lease space inside the Cookie Zoo, 1525 E. Sunset Road, Suite 10, by the business's owner Whitney Whiteman.

Whiteman understands how hard it can be to start a new business. Before she built her own shop, she baked her cookies inside a local cake maker's bakery.

For White, baking is more than a business.

"Baking is like therapy," she said. "After I did all the necessary things to open a business, I had to have a bakery space. It just gives me the opportunity to use (Whiteman's) ovens to do the baking since this is a brand new business."

White still gives all the credit to her husband for keeping her spirits up and helping her when she needed it most. She now hopes her cookie designs will put a smile on the face of people.

"My husband is my number one fan. He did everything for me," White said. "There were several months of him dressing me, cutting up my food, combing my hair, tying my shoes. He did the housework and the cooking. I bounced back and I owe it all to him.

"I can't be a bedside nurse anymore. It's sad to leave the profession because I know I'm needed. But I know I can still help heal people by making them happy with cookies."

Cookies by Joannie are available at the Cookie Zoo and can also be shipped. Those interested can e-mail her at joannie@cookiesbyjoannie.com.


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