Joey Feek Of Joey And Rory Cancer Update: Joey Opens Up About Dying In Candid Interview

Joey Feek of the country music duo Joey and Rory has been battling cancer for over a year. In 2014, three months after welcoming her now 20-month-old daughter Indiana (“Indy” for short), Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She later underwent a hysterectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

At the time, Joey, her doctors, and her family thought she had kicked it. However, in mid-October, as Feek was preparing to take on another round of chemo, the doctors made a grim discovery. Not only was Joey’s cancer back, it was rapidly spreading to other parts of her body, including her colon. As hard as it was for them to do, the doctors told Joey that there weren’t any more options. She could continue to do radiation and chemo, but it would only buy her time, not the cure she had been hoping and praying for.

Despite her prognosis, Joey has remained strong in her faith, and during a recent candid interview with Cindy Watts of The Tennessean, she opened up about her cancer battle and how it feels to know she will not be here for much longer.

Watts, who has been covering Joey Feek’s story over the past year, traveled six hours to conduct the interview and described Joey as looking “frail,” but still having a smile that “radiates throughout the room.”

.@joeyandrory‘s Joey Feek Spends Time With Family, Friends “We all laughed and we cried….” https://t.co/84fqV7vIkI pic.twitter.com/Vo5B1W2ed4

— SoundsLikeNashville (@SoundsLikeNash) November 16, 2015

When Watts asked Joey how she felt when she found out her cancer had not only returned, but spread, she told her that she was disappointed, but she was not angry with God.

“I wasn’t mad at him, I wasn’t upset,” Joey said. “I was just greatly disappointed. 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 and says, ‘She fought it.’ We did the most extreme surgery we can do in the gynecologic world, and she did well.’ But for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough, and God had different plans. I was disappointed. I was exhausted.”

Through tears, Joey added, “More than anything, I felt like I failed at something. I thought I did everything. 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.”

The doctors told Joey she had approximately six to nine months to live. She later talked to her sisters and best friend, and asked them for their honest opinion…did they think she had as much time as the doctors thought? Their answer…no. That is when Joey Feek made the decision to stop treatment and return to her home, where she would spend her final days, weeks, or months in the care of hospice. While she wanted to return to her home in Tennessee, Joey faced new cancer-related health problems in Indiana and asked her husband Rory Feek if hey could stay there.

“I said, Rory, if it’s OK with you, this is where I was born, it’s where I was raised, and this is where I die,” Feek told Watts. “He said, ‘Whatever you want.’ I said, ‘That’s what I want.'”

Although her cancer battle has taken its toll on her, Joey said she would do it all again if it meant bringing someone to Christ, recalling the day her dad went up the altar and gave his life to God.

Joey Feek is under hospice care and is “at peace with where she is and where she’s going” https://t.co/l3WKy3x7VO

— TIME.com (@TIME) November 10, 2015

“I just cried,” she said. “Now all of my family believes. And all of my family, when we die, we’re going to see each other again. I told my dad, ‘I would go through all of this again, if that meant one person came to Christ because of it. The fact that my daddy did, Dad, I would do it all over. I’m so proud of you. When I die, I’m going to be looking for you. And I want you to know, that after you hug my brother (Justin, who died in a car accident in 1994), I’m going to be next in line.'”

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Joey’s duet partner and husband Rory has been documenting her battle with cancer on his blog titled “This Life I Live.” Most recently, in a post titled “A Bus Full of Joy,” Rory talked about his wife’s death preparations and her final wishes of him.

“A rough-cut wooden box with a cross on it was placed beneath the bay of the bus and brought up here because that’s what Joey wants,” Rory wrote. “‘Thomas [their farmhand] to make my box… simple, from wood at the farm,’ she said. “And find a good spot in the family cemetery in the field behind our house, where we put your mama’s ashes last year… with room enough beside my headstone for you to join me someday… in God’s time.'”

[Photo by Richard Vogel/Associated Press]