Three Straight Septembers Ruined by Philadelphia

A cellular mutation named for the city of brotherly love

I'm a huge New York Mets fan. Since 2006, I've been a Sunday ticket plan holder. In my opinion there are few better ways than to spend a summer afternoon than in the upper deck of Shea Stadium, sitting in the sun, cold beer in hand, watching baseball.

In 2007, the Mets were coasting along, never really playing great, but eventually taking a seven game lead over the Phillies with 17 to play. Over the next 2 weeks that lead would evaporate. It culminated on a Sunday afternoon. Before I reached my seat Tom Glavine had surrendered 4 runs. He'd give up a few more before being pulled with 2 outs in the first inning. The Mets lost that game and were overtaken in the standings by the Phillies on the final day of the season.

In 2008, the Mets started off the season playing some lackluster baseball. A mid season managerial change seemed to light a fire and for a while they looked like one of the best teams in the league. Then in August Billy Wagner blew out his elbow and threw the bullpen into disarray. Going into the final weeks of the season with a 3.5 game lead seemed anything but safe. Turns out it was not. Again, the Phillies overtook the Mets and on the final day of the season the Mets again playing for their postseason lives came up short. The Phillies went on to win the World Series that fall. That was hard to watch. The Mets had taken the regular season series between the two teams and had Wagner not got hurt probably wouldn't have caught them again. Adding insult to injury Shane Victorino and Co. seemed to take every opportunity they had to mock the Mets on their way to a championship.

This year, the Mets suffered a bizarre rash of injuries and were really out of contention by mid-July. I thought to myself at least Philadelphia won't be ruining my September this year. I was wrong.

In mid-September I started seeing spots in my right eye. At first I didn't think anything of it, but after being annoyed by the condition for a few days I called up my eye doctor and described my symptoms. Immediately, he referred me to a retinal specialist, fearing that I might have a detached retina. A detached retina is a pretty serious condition, especially to someone who makes their living in the visual arts. Needless to say I was a bit concerned.

The retinal specialist ran a battery of tests and determined that my retinas were fine. That was a relief. However, it was just the beginning of this ordeal. The doctor discovered bleeding in both of my eyes. In the right eye, it was pooling in my field of vision, causing the spots. As for what was causing the bleeding, he wasn't sure and recommended that I go see an internist.

After leaving the retinal specialist, I spent the weekend celebrating my future brother in-laws wedding. Luckily, among the wedding guests, including the bride, were several nurses all of them were happy to refer me to a great doctor practicing internal medicine.

I made it to the doctor a few days later hoping to figure out what exactly was going on with my eyes. After a physical and and a series of blood draws, I left with an appointment for a week when all of the blood test would be back. I wouldn't make it back for that appointment.

The evening of the doctors appointment, my fiance, Mary and I had Mets tickets. Her alma mater's choir was singing the national anthem, so a group of us had standing plans to attend the game. I felt okay despite spending the majority of my day at the doctors office and was actually looking forward to going. In the fourth inning Mary's phone started ringing off the hook, all private numbers. Finally, she picked up the phone. On the other end was my doctor's office.

"Are you with John Tomac?" the voice on the other end asked.

She said yes and handed the phone over to me. On the other end was a doctor from my doctor's office. "We have your blood tests and their are some irregularities. You need to get to the emergency room right away. I don't want to alarm you, but we think you might have leukemia."

Mary and I left the game, hopped in a cab and headed to New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, where a team of doctors was waiting. The first doctor I saw was an oncologist who explained they were going to draw blood to make sure they hadn't mixed up the samples. I was pretty sure this was going to be the case, but soon learned there was no mistake.

The next two doctors that I saw were from the ICU. They were a bit surprised to see me in such good spirits and not feeling ill. Apparently, my white blood cell levels were 40-times higher than normal. I should have felt awful and been at risk for sorts of infection. Luckily, I felt fine and hadn't gotten sick. I spent a few more hours in the ER under observation before finally being admitted to a room on the Leukemia floor.

The next morning, I was visited by a team of oncologist who explained that they believed that I had Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. They ran a battery of tests including a bone marrow biopsy which confirmed their suspicions. The doctors went on to explain that my case of CML, like most, was caused by a mutation where a pair of chromosomes switch places. This condition is called the Philadelphia Chromosome.

A third straight September ruined by Philadelphia.

On October 15 I will be participating in the Light the Night Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with the Society of Illustrators team to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you would like to make a donation please click here.

Help Wipe Out Blood Cancers

Last week, rather unexpectedly, I was hospitalized and diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.

On October 15 I will be joining the Society of Illustrators team at the 2009 Light the Night Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. If you would like to make a donation to help fund Leukemia and Lymphoma research please click here. We are just shy of the halfway point of our goal. Please help push us over the edge.

In the near future I'll begin sharing a little more info on my diagnosis and treatment.

Illustration Friday-Welcome

This weeks Illustration Friday topic is Welcome.

Liberty Enlightening the World has been welcoming people to New York's harbor and the United States as a landmark (and originally as a lighthouse) since 1886.

Since July 4 visitors are welcome to visit the crown.

If you like this image you are welcome to buy it here.

SILA Illustration West—Call for Entries

The Society of Illustrators-Los Angeles also has a Call for Entries out for Illustration West 48.

Society of Illustrators—Call for Entries

The Call for Entries is out for this year's Society of Illustrators show.

Entry details are here.

The Tyranny of the Alphabet

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of being called for jury duty in Kings County.

The day got off to a bit of a rough start. Somewhere between Grand Army Plaza and Borough Hall I lost my summons. I can only assume that it fell out of my pocket and ended up as litter in the tracks or stuck to someone's wet shoes on the subway. Upon my arrival to the courthouse I had to make a detour to the county clerk's office get a new summons. The woman behind the counter offered me the chance to come again another day, but I figured that since I was already there I'd deal with the unpleasant civic duty to get it out of the way.

With my freshly printed summons in hand, I headed to the jury room. There were already about 300 hundered other unhappy people waiting when I got there. Some read the paper, some brought laptops, a few were watching a Fox News with the sound off on the large flatscreen TV's throughout the room. I sat doodling in my jurors handbook and in a sketchbook I brought along.

Shortly after I arrived, a diminutive man in a loud suit entered the room, took a seat behind the desk at the front of the room and began explaining what was going to happen that day. At one point he mentioned that if you didn't have a basic grasp on the English language you would be dismissed after meeting with a translator. At this point about two-dozen individuals ran to the front of the room. All of them were told to sit down because clearly they understood English well enough to serve on a jury. the rest of the room broke out into laughter.

The next point he made was that everyone's service was going to be needed until 5:00 p.m., no exceptions. Even if you were called to potentially serve on a jury and were rejected, you needed to stick around in case you were needed for another case.

All of these instructions were repeated again in Spanish, Chinese and Russian, then the waiting began.

Periodically potential jurors were called away to interview rooms down the hall. At first, just about everyone was paying attention, then after about an hour almost no one was. Each time a new name was called a few panicked people began asking those sitting near them if their name was called. This dragged on for hours, but somehow managed to feel significantly longer. The monotony was broken up briefly by lunch, then proceeded to drag on for what felt like forever and a day.

Around 3:30 something almost miraculous happened. The diminutive gentleman in the loud shirt returned and informed us that he lied. We were all going to be dismissed early. A loud round of applause burst out. However, before anyone could run for the door, we were informed that each of us needed to leave with a piece of paper that said we had served our time. We were also informed that this magic piece of paper was going to get us out of jury duty until 2017. However, there was a small catch, if we left without the paper we were going to be marked absent for the day and called again in the near future.

At that point, the real torture began.

How do you dismiss 300 people? With alphabetical order of course!

At this point I realized that wasn't going home anytime soon. The Tomac's are blessed with many wonderful characteristics. We're intelligent, attractive, hard-working and and we smell good, too. Unfortunately, we are burdened with a name that falls near the end of the alphabet.

So I sat through what felt like the reading of the Brooklyn white pages. I learned that there are a surprising number of Johnsons and Smiths in New York's most populous borough. I also was in awe of the number of different surnames that start with the letter Q.

Checking the time on my cell phone it was 4:30, about an hour into the dismissal process, when at long last they reached the letter T. At this point I thought I was going to be leaving any minute. I was wrong. I waited through the Ta's and the Te's. Th and Ti came and went. A few strange combos like Tc were thrown in for good measure. At long last the To's were reached. Unfortunately, all sorts of To last names were called before they reached Tomac.

Finally, I could leave! At this point I was among the last dozen or so left in the jury room. Checking the time again, it was 5:00 on the nose.

So much for leaving early.

If anything positive came out of my hour-and-a-half wait it was the rough drawing that became the image above.

My lovely fiancé thinks I'm a little crazy for getting worked up over this, but her last name starts with a C...at least for the next few months.

Interviewing for a job in print 5 years from now

Here is a recent image for FOLIO.

The story, which can be read here, is about jobs people will be applying for in publishing industry over the next 5 years. It's an interesting to see where publishers see their industry heading at a time when most are predicting its demise.

Dan Trombetto was the AD on this illustration.