January 10th, 2026

8:46pm

Ruth’s skin color is looking better today—it was a little on the gray side yesterday. She is being slowly weaned down on the ventilator settings as she becomes accustomed to the new tube. She had a incubator changeout and follow up ultrasound on her heart (waiting to hear back). She also has a blood test at 4am tomorrow, which will tell us among other things how her platelets are doing.

While it hasn’t grown externally today, her stomach is still very swollen—hard to the touch, like a stressed balloon. Her heart rate was elevated this afternoon, so they gave her a one time trial of fentanyl, which brought it down to normal levels. Theory was that she was experiencing pain from her stomach, which I can believe, having touched it myself.

Please pray for relief for Ruth. She seems to be suffering to some extent, but they’re doing pretty much everything they can medically. Even surgically there’s theoretically not much they can do if the scans have been correct. We have peace in the fact that we serve the God who made Ruth, who is the Healer and great Physician, and He hears our prayers.