After recovering from stage IV tongue cancer, Chesaning native Tami Johnson turned her hobby of baking as a way of helping her recovery and providing a new business opportunity.

“(Baking) gave me something to do,” Johnson said of her business, Tami’s Sweet Treats.

Johnson was diagnosed with stage IV cancer in June 2009. As a result, she had most of her tongue and 120 lymph nodes removed. Because of the surgery, recovery, chemotherapy and radiation, she couldn’t continue working as a manager at Borders.

Johnson had to leave her job at the bookstore that she loved, and her son, who was 2 years old at the time her tongue was removed, had to stay with family for two months during Johnson’s recovery.

“I think I wanted to recover faster so he could come home sooner,” Johnson said. “I don’t have any bad feelings about losing my job. It was a job, but I enjoyed it… (The cancer) has given me time to do (baking).”

“Yes, (the cancer) changed my life, but it gave me something I want to do,” Johnson said. “(Baking is) something I love to do,” she said.

Johnson started baking in the spring of 2010, and began selling her products as Tami’s Sweet Treats at the farmers market in Hartland, and then at the farmers market in Fenton. She now sells at both farmers markets as well as bake sales around the Linden area, and is planning to start selling her products around the Owosso-area farmers markets.

The business is small right now, but she enjoys it because she can still bake from home in her own kitchen, Johnson said.

“It’s a whole different life,” Johnson said. “It was my determination to get back to the life I had. (The cancer) is not going to stop me.”

“I think it’s going to keep growing,” Johnson said about her business. She said more orders continue to come in every day.

“I was lucky,” Johnson said, noting the cancer did not spread to the back of her tongue, which would have left her without speech completely, nor did the cancer spread to her bones.

When she was able to speak again, Johnson said, “That was a big day.”

Johnson said she completely surprised her mother when she said, “Hi mom.”

Stunning diagnosis

Johnson’s journey from cancer patient to entrepreneur wasn’t an easy one.

Johnson said the cancer started as just a small pimple on her tongue, and an earache that would not go away.

When the pimple on her tongue grew to be the size of two thumbnails within two weeks, Johnson and her family were surprised to find out it was cancer because she had no history of tobacco use or drinking.

“It was so far out of left field,” her husband Dave Johnson said.

Dave Johnson was worried and said the biggest struggle was not knowing the future.

“You don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “It changes your life.”

The development of cancer is described by stages. Stage IV means cancer has spread from the initial site to other locations within the body.

Johnson’s mother JoAnn Ostipow said the biggest struggles for her were questioning why it was happening to her daughter and the uncertainty of the future for her daughter.

“I coped with it because I had to,” Ostipow said.

The worst part, Tami Johnson said, was not the physical issues: “Emotionally, it was a lot harder. It was tough, but I had a lot of support.”

Recovering

After removing Johnson’s tongue, doctor took skin and blood vessels from Johnson’s forearm and fashioned a replacement tongue for her. Taking the tissue from her arm required using skin from her thigh to then help repair her arm.

Thanks to the new tongue, she can now speak, but Tami Johnson was completely non-verbal for two months after her surgery and her tongue movements and her speech are not the same as before she had cancer.

“I was her mouthpiece for two months,” Dave Johnson said. In addition to her husband’s aid, Tami Johnson used a dry-erase board to communicate with others around her.

“It was hard because I didn’t know what she was feeling,” Dave Johnson said.

Tami Johnson agreed, “You can’t write what you’re feeling.”

“I didn’t understand, and won’t ever understand what she is going through,” Dave Johnson said.

Changed person

Ostipow said when Tami Johnson was in the hospital, a nurse said a year from then her daughter would be a different person, which she called “the new Tami.”

“It’s been a year, but things are still healing,” Ostipow said. “I’m encouraged she’s beginning her own little business.”

“I think it was more of a learning thing too…Learning how to swallow again” and how to talk again was tough, Tami Johnson said. “You have no idea how important your tongue is.

“My tongue doesn’t have the same type of movement as everyone else’s,” Johnson said of her new tongue. Although she can taste foods, she said her taste is now “distorted” and not the same as she remembers.

While baking her cookies and cupcakes or eating, Johnson relies on her sense of smell to know what flavors to expect, but does not trust her sense of taste anymore.

“Dave has to taste (the cookies and cupcakes)” to make sure they taste good, Johnson said.

“Which is hurting my waist line,” Dave Johnson joked.