Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Our Family Picture


We took our last formal family picture more than three years ago, before Nathaniel was born. Because I'm usually behind the camera, we have very few pictures of all of us in the same shot. The last one we have is from Nathaniel's 1st birthday back in August. We had an appointment to take a formal portrait this Saturday, November 22. Julianne had found a perfect set of dresses for the girls and a matching suit for Nathaniel. She made me get a haircut exactly 2 weeks ago so that my hair would be the perfect length for the picture.

It was apparent that we wouldn't be able to make our family portrait appointment on Saturday, so we were hoping to maybe take a quick snapshot with our digital camera before they operated on Isabella. We were fully expecting them to shave her head, so we wanted to take this opportunity to take a picture with her beautiful hair intact. As we were preparing to transport Isabella down to NYU so we can treat the tumor in her head, I was putting together a list of items to pick up from home. As Julianne was riding with Isabella in the ambulance, I would pick up the kids at home (my mom and Julianne's mom, who had just come down from Vermont, were watching the kids), pick up all our clothes, and bring everything down to NYU. Hopefully, by the time they got to NYU, Isabella would be lucid enough so that we could take a picture.

Unfortunately, I got a call from Julianne around 5:00 PM after they arrived at NYU. Isabella did not get any better on the ride down, and in fact vomited more and seemed to be getting worse. There was no way we would be able to take a picture. Instead, I gathered some overnight essentials for us, left the kids at home with the grandmas and headed straight for NYU. The medical staff there was extremely concerned about Isabella's condition and was considering operating on her that night.

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