Staying strong. Joey Feek opened up about her final days battling terminal cervical cancer on Saturday, Nov. 14, saying she’s not afraid of dying.
“I pray that one morning I just don’t wake up,” the country singer, 40, told The Tennessean. “I don’t fear anything because I’m so close to God and we’ve talked about it so many times. I know he’s close. And I know he loves me. I’m really at peace. I still believe there’s healing in prayer.”
Earlier this week, Feek entered hospice after being diagnosed with stage IV cervical cancer last year and has turned to her husband and Joey + Rory bandmate, Rory Feek, for support.
“A walker with wheels and a seat was delivered here yesterday and when we pulled it out for her this morning, Joey just laughed and said, ‘I can’t use that… it’s for old people.’ Then she grabbed the handles and pushed herself out of the room,” Rory wrote in his blog on Thursday, Nov. 12.
The wife and mother of 21-month-old daughter Indiana halted her chemotherapy treatments last month after finding out that they were ineffective in her battle against cancer. She now has turned to more natural remedies.
“I’m doing all these alternative things and taking things I’ve never taken before, organic, all natural, and homeopathic, it can’t hurt,” she admitted. “I’m doing all I can to be more comfortable.”
Despite her setbacks, she said she’s learned to find the blessings in her illness.
“All of my family believes now [in God],” she said. “All of them, when we die, we’re going to see each other again.”
Feek said in her interview with The Tennessean that she had hoped to be the one who beat the odds and wasn’t mad or upset when she learned her cancer had returned.
“I was just greatly disappointed,” she said. “I really thought we had it. I thought, ‘I’m going to be that exception. I’m going to be that statistic that stands out.’ We did the most extreme surgery we can do in the gynecologic world, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough. I was exhausted. More than anything I felt like I failed at something. But God decided for me that my job of singing for people down here is my legacy, and he needs me singing up there. That’s how I look at it.”
