Artist transformed daughter's leukemia fight into images in clay

VIRGINIA BEACH

Take a look at the first page of the Treon family's Big Book of Cancer.

It's filled with a detailed list of procedures and pills, with long, scary names such as doxorubicin, mercaptopurine and methotrexate.

But scan down to the bottom of the page, where Eileen Treon first started to translate those evil-sounding invaders of her daughter's life into quick sketches of flowers, animals, hearts, moon rocks and a beloved sugary-drink pitchman.

That's the real story of this book.

When Treon's 12-year-old daughter, Morgan, successfully completed her two-year leukemia treatment at the end of 2007, the mother and art teacher molded her feelings into a series of small sculptures.

The work will be on display at the Harbor Gallery in Norfolk starting Friday in a show called "Life on Chemo - One Family's Journey Through Childhood Leukemia."

Related: An artist's 21-breast salute to cancer survivors

"This was a place to put all the experiences I had as a Mom," Treon said. "It's a way to get it out of my heart. I can't carry it around all the time - it's too hard."

In 2005 Morgan, then an energetic fourth-grader, started feeling tired and sick. During a family trip to Disneyland with her parents and younger brother she felt worse, and passed out on the plane coming home. Doctors told the family she had leukemia, and she immediately began a treatment that would stretch out over two years and two months.

Eileen Treon and her husband, Brett, maintained an exhaustive list of everything Morgan endured, and Eileen used that list to inspire her artwork. The inches-thick black binder now overflows with reports, charts, prescriptions and other paperwork chronicling 82 visits to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk.

"Only 82," Morgan dryly quipped.

Eileen, Morgan and her brother Cameron, who is 8, lounged in their airy, colorful living room in Virginia Beach on an August afternoon. Dad was at work at Old Dominion University. They live in an artist's house, decorated with Treon's paintings and sculptures. Up near the ceiling in a sunny corner a yellow sign simply says "laugh."

In September of last year, Eileen, an art teacher at Malibu Elementary School, started working on her sculptures.

"Of course it happened to her, the chemicals and the treatments and the procedures, but as a parent what happens to your kids happens to you," she said.

One of the most striking pieces is a stylized wolf standing on two legs and spreading its arms, trying to blow down a small house. It represents Morgan's experience with the steroid dexamethasone, which seriously affected her moods.

"When you go on steroids, you become this creature," Treon said. "We called her a she-wolf on steroids. It just takes over. You can be crying one minute and angry the next."

So the she-wolf, as Treon calls it, is the effects of the steroid on Morgan, and the house is the family.

"Sometimes as a family you feel like you're going to fall apart. It's a small house, but it's really strong. And the she-wolf is big, like Morgan is bigger than all this."

The cheeriest piece is a red Kool-Aid pitcher, complete with the smiling visage of Kool-Aid Man. This is for doxorubicin, an anti-tumor medicine whose sweet taste and red color belies its toxicity.

"It made me lose my hair, but I didn't care," Morgan said.

One unfinished piece shows two figures, Morgan and her nurse. The patient is lying down, with her back bent and exposed, the nurse's arms wrapped around her. It's the pose Morgan assumed to get a lumbar puncture, which is about as horrible as it sounds.

"Don't talk about it," Morgan squealed, leaving the room.

It was about time to go, anyway. Morgan and Cameron had just returned from one summer camp and were getting ready for another, while preparing for the start of school at the same time.

In cancer lingo, Morgan is in remission and has stayed in remission.

For now, Treon has closed the big book.

Jim Washington, (757) 446-2536, jim.washington@pilotonline.com