The Big Tomato
More Than a Nickname
This brief essay will talk about blood but will not show any.
My mother painted the still life “Garlic and the Big Tomato” in 2021 before my allogeneic stem cell transplant in July 2021. I will explain in time and in lay person’s terms this medical argot that will continue to pop up like so many summer weeds in Two Years a Vampire.
These days, I am finding myself rising above the weeds. The slog through the eight-feet high grass has ended. More on that. I certainly am promising a lot. That means I am committed to this writing project.
Thank you, Mom! I can pull significance from her watercolor this way. Prior to the stem cell transplant, my dermatological oncologist prescribed a procedure that involved extracting my blood, centrifuging it, adding a chemical to it, irradiating it with ultra-violet, and transfusing it back into my body.
That sums up the treatment so very briefly. Many individuals with the type of cancer I had respond well to the treatment. However, the treatment does not produce a cure, and my body remained in stasis as far as the cancer went. Actually, it slowly worsened during the two years of this treatment.
This indeed is a situation where I do not know what I do not know. That is, would the cancer illness have had “progressed” more quickly had I not underwent photopheresis?
Of course, the painting also includes a bulb of garlic. Most will get the significance of a bulb of garlic in a publication named Two Years a Vampire.
Here is the second most important item I remember about the watercolor: I grew both the tomato and the bulb of garlic. I maintained, shakily I have to say, a garden throughout the cancer journey. I receive that much joy from growing things.
Lastly, “The Big Tomato” became one of my nicknames. During a vacation to Colorado Springs in 2020, my wife’s younger brother used that as my handle on our walkie-talkie communiques as we drove from the Midwest to Colorado.
I fit the bill: big and red.
For now, we can leave it at that. I have many threads to pull together in the ruby red tapestry. That is for sure.