Jill Biden

First lady Jill Biden speaks after touring a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at a high school in Waipahu, Hawaii, on Sunday. Caleb Jones/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — For the second time this year, President Biden has cleared his schedule to accompany his wife, Jill Biden, to a medical procedure.

The first lady was walking along the ocean on Oahu, Hawaii, near Honolulu last weekend when she “stepped on an object on the beach which became lodged in her left foot,” her spokesman Michael LaRosa said in a statement.

White House officials haven’t specified what the object is, but the condition has become serious enough to require a trip to the hospital.

“She will undergo a procedure (Thursday) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to remove the object,” LaRosa said. “The President will join her.”

The first lady was in Hawaii to tour a pop-up coronavirus vaccination clinic at a high school in Waipahu and to attend a barbecue with 75 service members at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. It was the final stretch of her five-day trip to cheer on Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics – a trip that started with vaccination-related events in Anchorage, and ended with the trip to Hawaii.

Jill Biden, 70, made no complaints about issues with her foot at the events or during the flight back to Joint Base Andrews. She even came back to the cabin to greet the press pool and thank them for their work on the trip.

In April, President Biden accompanied the first lady to an outpatient center near George Washington University, where she underwent what the White House said was “a common medical procedure.”

“The first lady tolerated the procedure well,” communications director Elizabeth Alexander said at the time.

The president had just been elected to the Senate in December 1972 when he lost his first wife, Neilia Biden, and his 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash. He refused to leave the hospital where his badly injured toddler sons Beau and Hunter Biden were being treated, and was sworn into office from their hospital room. He was also at Beau’s hospital bedside when he passed away from brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.

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