January is always a busy month for us. Right after Christmas, we have three birthdays in a row: Adrienne’s on the 3rd, mine on the 6th, and Neil’s on the 16th. We also have the privilege of attending the Palm Beach Police Foundation’s annual ball held at Mar-a-Lago (Donald Trump’s home) in Palm Beach every year. The Ball usually falls the first weekend in January (after New Year’s Day weekend) and Neil and I use it as a way to celebrate our birthdays. (You can see some fun pics of us here, here, here, and here.)
The month of January 2011 was set to be even busier than those of years’ past. Not only did we have the Police Foundation ball to attend, but we also had a wedding and the Cystic Fibrosis ball to attend. Three big events, two of them black-tie, all before January 15th. Let me just say that after our yearly January outing, we usually never leave the house again until the next year. Our neighbor’s always tease us…we never leave the house, but when we do, we do it BIG!
My mom and dad usually attend the ball with us. However, they skipped it that year because my dad had to have a procedure done. I can’t remember now if he had it done before or after the ball, but I know that they didn’t go. They did however, attend the wedding and the Cystic Fibrosis ball with us.
There are several things from January 2011 that I do remember. I remember that the procedure that my dad had was a result of his having a melanoma removed. The melanoma led to a CT-scan. The CT-scan led to a little spot on his lung. The procedure was to take a biopsy of the spot on his lung.
The biopsy wasn’t very conclusive, so the next step was to surgically remove the spot. The plan was to remove the spot, have it analyzed, and then proceed from there, all while he was still in surgery. Let me just fast-forward and say that after a few hours he came out of surgery with 1/3 of his lung and a cancerous spot removed.
He was in the hospital in Stuart, so I went there as much as I could (with laptop in hand so I could play Farmville with him) and to sit with my mom. We knew that he would need chemo, but the doctors all seemed very optimistic. I was glad that Adrienne had a car because I didn’t need to worry about being at the bus stop at a certain time to drop off and pick up the girls. I spent the nights with my mom at her house.
On her way home from the hospital every night she stopped and got donuts. We devoured them. We also looked forward to seeing what the hospital cafeteria had to offer every day for lunch. I remember that we were looking forward to “Luau Day.” How sick is that? Looking forward to the daily menu at the hospital cafeteria.
Little did I know that in just a few short weeks, we would be reading the menu at a different hospital, for a different reason.