January 19, 2026
Our next transplant is tomorrow, and we are more than ready.
We were immensely blessed during the last transplant with an incredible medical team and a very strong fighter. We truly believe it was your prayers that made our hospital stay so quick.
Hopefully tomorrow, we will begin our next transplant, and just like before, the plan is to stay about 4–5 weeks. This round will include three different types of high-dose chemotherapy, followed by rescuing her bone marrow with a transplant of her own stem cells on day 10.
During this round, they will be watching Erma’s heart and hearing very closely. I haven’t shared much publicly about side effects because it still hurts my heart that she is facing any of this. Grief has a strange way of fixating on certain things. This intense frontline treatment will likely leave long-term effects that she will carry for the rest of her (God-willing) long life, infertility, hormonal imbalances, cognitive challenges, and more. But the possibility of hearing loss, something incredibly common with her treatment, hits me especially hard.
It honestly feels like a miracle that Erma currently has only moderately severe high frequency hearing loss and does not require hearing aids yet. I am continually praying that this next round of chemo does not push her over that edge. And if it does… I know it isn’t the end of the world. She’s alive, and they make hearing aids with glitter now.
Once again, I’d love to ask you to set your alarms for 9:00 AM and pray with us each day beginning January 20th. Here are a few specific prayer requests as we move into this next round:
1. Pray that God protects Erma’s organs and body from long-term damage
2. Pray for protection over Erma’s hearing, with no further loss
3. Pray for Johnny as he navigates being away from us and from Erma, he is facing so much anxiety from being separated from us
I often feel like I’m asking so much, but we truly need every prayer and every miracle. If you feel led, we would also be deeply grateful for anyone willing to fast in additon to prayer on any day between January 20th and February 20th.
Thank you to every person who is lifting Erma up and believing in her miracle!
