GRAND FORKS — 80-year-old Gene Dobson started his Wednesday morning, Jan. 20, where he spends most of his mornings — in the kitchen baking cookies.
"I ate them way too much, and my mother wouldn't make them, so I started (baking)," Dobson said.
Before he regularly pressed sugar on dough, and kept the oven hot, Dobson was in Altru Hospital and the Cancer Center of North Dakota three years ago, dealing with lung cancer and pneumonia.
His family thought he was on death's door, even building an urn just in case, but Dobson survived, with some sacrifices.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I haven't been able to smell for a full day at any time," he said. "It only lasts for maybe a couple minutes."
With most of his smell and all of his taste gone, Dobson has called on his daughter Dianne Hoffman's help often.
"Sometimes he needs a second nose, sometimes he'll ask a second opinion, because he's like 'Oh, I don't like that,' and I'm like, 'How do you even know,'" she said.
Despite the challenges to his senses, Dobson's made enough batches to keep his freezers full, and take some to the Cancer Center as a way to give back to nurses like Kahlie Peterson, who helped him when he was a patient.
"It's always nice too, because we get to share (the cookies) also with the other patients, so they also get to see how well he's doing. It also encourages other patients to keep coming in and pushing towards a better goal," Peterson said.
ADVERTISEMENT
At this stage of life, Dobson is happy to be a "Cookie Man," and a Beethoven of baking.
"A lot of people think, 'Hell, I'm just gonna sit on my ass when I'm done,'" he said. "Well, they can go ahead."
As of Wednesday, Dobson has baked nearly 1,100 batches of cookies since he started baking last July.
Other stories:
