Today, August 12th, Ruth Truth will have a 4-hour surgery to repair her soft palate cleft. We check in at the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children's Hospital at 11:00 a.m. CST with the surgery scheduled from 12:30-4:30 p.m.
The surgical technique that our team will use to repair Ruth's cleft is called Z-plasty. I won't go into details—a search engine will give you those. All I want to say is that they can do things with flesh and tissue that I wouldn't have imagined possible.
Still, we set our trust on Christ and recognize that medical technology is a gift from Him. He is the Great Physician. This brings us back to a verse in the psalms we have returned to again and again.
Psalm 20:7
The surgical technique that our team will use to repair Ruth's cleft is called Z-plasty. I won't go into details—a search engine will give you those. All I want to say is that they can do things with flesh and tissue that I wouldn't have imagined possible.
Still, we set our trust on Christ and recognize that medical technology is a gift from Him. He is the Great Physician. This brings us back to a verse in the psalms we have returned to again and again.
Psalm 20:7
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
For Prayer
Please pray that...
- Ruth's intubation would go well so that there is minimal or no swelling in her airway and she can be extubated immediately post-surgery. She has a difficult airway which will really test the anesthesiologists (the surgeon for her G-tube said "She gave the anesthesiologist a run for her money!"). We are only supposed to be in the hospital for one night before we can come home, but a bad intubation that causes her throat to swell has the highest possibility of keeping us there longer. The Lord answered this prayer for Ruth's ptosis surgery by providing another method for anesthesia instead of intubation, but due to the nature of this surgery, that won't be possible this time.
- Dr. Deborah Kacmarynski, Ruth’s surgeon, will have a clear mind and steady hands. Christ is her Lord and Savior, so she will especially appreciate your prayers. She's praying for this surgery, too. We are so grateful for her.
- We will be steady and strong as we care for Ruth as she recovers from this surgery. We will need stamina for the first night post-surgery in the hospital (Lauren and I expect to stay with Ruth in the hospital while Martha stays at the hotel with Grandma Connie and Mima Mary), and we will need stamina for the three weeks of recovery that Ruth requires. We expect her to be quite uncomfortable during this period.
- Ruth's healing and recovery will go better than we expect. While I am preparing myself for the worst, I also know that God delivered a mighty answer to this prayer after Ruth's ptosis surgery. He has done it, and He can do it again.
- God would perform a miracle by preventing Ruth from vomiting during the three critical weeks of recovery. She has never gone more than three days without vomiting since we brought her home from the NICU when she was just 8 weeks old. The pressure and acidity of this action has the potential to irritate the surgical site and cause a hole to form or the sutures to pull apart. This would warrant another procedure, which is why it’s a main point of concern for our family and Dr. Kacmarynski. It’s good to pray for a miracle!
In case you haven't been graced with seeing Ruth's soft palate cleft, you can get some idea of what it looks like in the picture below that Lauren was able to snap back in May.
It was a sneaky cleft. After she was born, it took a week before it was discovered. A lactation consultant found it right before we were sent to the NICU in Iowa City. Now, at 1 year old (her birthday was August 9th), she is strong enough and big enough to have it repaired. Praise the Lord! We've waited for this!
It should be noted that repairing this cleft won't make Ruth suddenly able to eat orally. There's a lot more that needs to happen before that's possible: skills need to be acquired, aversions need to be overcome, and muscles need to be strengthened. With God's help, we'll get there. Ruth is really teaching us the principle of slow and steady progress.
Our family's current worship jam: Oh My Soul (Psalm 103) by TobyMac.
