Penny’s Kicking Cancer

06/18/2025

We are broken hearted to even have to post this. The love we’ve seen over the last week has been phenomenal. Nearly 540 individuals came to show their respect for mom. It was the most beautiful service for the most beautiful person. The flowers were everywhere. The service was at standing room only. That was just a testament of how many lives she touched. Friends from every part of her life were there to share stories and their fondest memories. Thank you to all of our prayer warriors during this last year and half. We all just knew she would beat it, but God had other plans. It’s not goodbye, but see you later. We love you, Nanny!

View Penny Lou Johnson's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

06/12/2025

Oh, how my heart hurts to write this. We lost our beautiful mom and wonderful nanny last night around 10pm. She sure fought hard against cancer, but that disgusting disease won. She was surrounded by so much love. Wow! What a legacy she left. We really never understood how many people she touched in her short, 65 years. We can’t even explain how much we appreciate all of the prayers and support we’ve received over the last 564 days. We’d love to hear some great stories that you have with our Nanny. Feel free to post them below. 💜

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers in the days to come. Especially our daddy. The love of his life and his mate for 48 years is now sitting next to Jesus.

06/04/2025

Time for an update!

Well, the last few months haven’t been the best, so there wasn’t a lot to update. This 3rd line of chemo has been extremely hard for mom to tolerate. She’s very weak and under weight right now, so that poison just took her down. We were told about a place in Mexico called, Hope4cancer. It’s “integrative” care, so nothing harsh or harmful is used. There are lots of vitamins and immunity boosting infusions. Heat and sonar therapies. Just a bunch of cool stuff that’s been proven to kill cancer tumors that isn’t necessarily practiced in the U.S. Thousands of people have had success stories after leaving there, so why not?! With that being said, mom and dad are leaving this Thursday and will be there for 3 weeks. It was a fast moving decision, but we are praying this is the answer. We feel like God has been making a way for this move, though. Her benefit acct has enough money to handle this, our aunts handled getting her a private flight to keep her from commercial airline germs and the passport agency expedited their recently expired passports in the same day! All signs are pointing to YES. Please continue to pray. We need safe travels and for her body to be restored. We need her strong again so she can fight. We need her appetite to improve so she can pack on some lbs. Just pray. We are so grateful for all of them so far. We serve such a mighty God and we know He listens.

05/02/2025

I haven’t updated in a while, but honestly, there hasn’t been a lot of positive things happening. The clinical trial ended up coming to an abrupt end. Apparently our oncologist at Methodist forgot mom had received a first line of chemo while at MDA and that disqualified her. While waiting to see what our next options were, she started feeling really crummy right after her birthday. Her O2 kept dropping into the 80s without activity, so we convinced her an ER visit was warranted. They ended up diagnosing her with pneumonia and she spent a few nights in the hospital. She’s been on oxygen since coming home. Fast forward to this last week. CT results showed she has more metastisis in her bones. Most notably on her L3, where she has another fracture. Yep. Another crack in her spine. Luckily, there is enough hardware in there from her recent back surgery to keep it stable, unless the cancer continues to harm the integrity of the bone. She had simulation for radiation on Tuesday and hopefully we can get all those spots zapped soon. She starts a third line of chemo tomorrow. If she can tolerate this and we can get the pain under control, we have plans to fly to Arizona at the end of the month to consult with a facility that specializes in late stage cancer. They use immunotherapies and targeted therapy to go straight into the bone to fight the disease. Her lung cancer and adrenal gland have been holding pretty stable, but this bone nonsense is getting aggressive. She still has the fight in her, but has a lot of pain. We’re doing all the other things as well. If you’ve read about something that has had success in fighting and/or beating cancer, I can assure you she’s been doing it. It’s been a rough couple of months. We need a WIN. Please, please continue to pray. We serve a God who is in the miracle business and right now we need a good one.

02/21/2025

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had an update, so here it goes:

After the cancer creeped into the bone and broke her lower spine, we switched to Methodist and a whole new type of chemotherapy. She has had a long recovery, especially having major back surgery WHILE fighting the C word. It’s taken a while to get her strength back and sadly, she has lost a lot of weight due to this new therapy. The metallic taste has changed the way food tastes and has caused her appetite to be almost non-existence. She started some PT last week and it’s helped a lot. We’ve recently had a PET scan and MRI of the brain and we’ve been waiting to talk with her oncologist. There were some nuggets of information given on her MyChart and we’ve been on edge. I’m not going to lie, when you’re on this journey, you tend to go to “worst case scenario” more than you should. Today we got confirmation that the cancer is stable, with only a few areas of progression in the bone and a tiny spot on the brain. This is completely normal and would be zapped with a bit more radiation. We will most likely be doing this next week. She’s also gained 5 lbs and has chunked her walker to the curb, for the most part. Her awesome doctor is suggesting a new, clinical trial called, TIL Therapy. He feels super positive that extracting some of her tumor (and doing cool cancer research stuff with it) will combat the cancer in the bone. This is all wonderful news! He is confident and says she is responding well to everything. No new growth in any other spots!!! It’s extremely common for lung cancer to metastasize to the brain and bone, but when you spot it early, it’s easily treatable. We know so many people that have continuously prayed for mom and we are so, so grateful. GOD listens! He really does and He has big plans for our Nanny. Love to everyone and it’s a great day!

11/13/2024

Newest update! Mom starts radiation tomorrow at noon! We’re not wasting any time. Afterwards, she will be getting the 36 staples removed from her spine.
The plan is to do radiation Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She has an appt next Monday to have a port placed to make things a little easier, so they may move to Tuesday, due to her being too sore. Yesterday was a good day. Today wasn’t as great, but we treat each day as a blessing. She’s getting stronger and stronger. We are going to keep kicking this cancer’s butt!!

11/08/2024

So a little update on mom:

We went for the radiation simulation yesterday. Unfortunately, the pain that she has been having on her right shoulder is not just a torn rotator cuff, but a bone metastasis. 😞 The radiation oncologist looked at it yesterday and decided to also radiate this area. The sim lab is completed and we would normally be looking at 10-12 days to start radiation. However, they are concerned with another area on her thoracic spine and want to act fast. They are now pushing for 7-10 days. We will meet with a new oncologist with Methodist on Monday to go over a completely different systemic treatment plan. The one from MD Anderson was working when it comes to the lung and adrenal gland, but it wasn’t doing the job on the bone areas. We initially started looking at housing closer to the med center, since radiation is every other day, but the Dr sounded positive when he said he didn’t think it would be too taxing on her. We will play it by ear and decide if that’s needed once things get going. She is getting up and slowly getting around. She’s had a pretty good group of nurses since she’s been back home 🤪 Sunday, Rach will remove the dressing to her surgical site and send photos to her DR in hopes of getting a date to remove the staples. Mom is being very positive, despite this new diagnosis, and we will not give up!! We know we serve a mighty and powerful God!!! I honestly feel He has a plan for her. She’s been pretty darn strong up to this point and she’s got a lot of fight left. Please keep the prayers coming. I know so many of you include her daily and we are so very thankful. We want her out of this pain more than anything and back to enjoying all the things she loves. She WILL have a wonderful testimony to share one day. I will speak that into existence! I feel it!!

Penny’s gonna kick cancer!!!

11/07/2024

Today’s update!

We are having a fabulous day! Nurse “Stephonya” is a go-getter. We’ve had a shower, washed hair and put on a full face of makeup. We even have her contacts in! Her pain is very minimal and she ate a big lunch. I think she’s going to be ready to fight when this radiation starts!!

11/07/2024

Update on mom yesterday:

11/01/2024

Little update on mom from Rach:

I spoke to the radiation oncologist and they want to proceed asap with radiation. The team at Methodist seems very passionate and positive. We were told by the surgeon, primary dr and the oncologist that we needed to wait until her surgical wound healed before proceeding with radiation, however, the radiation oncologist does not want to prolong it!! He said there is a spot at her thoracic spine that is a concern and we need to move quickly to prevent an emergency surgery like we just had with the lumbar spine. It’s overwhelming for mom, but she is staying in good spirits. They want to do 5 rounds of radiation which would be every other day for 2 weeks. We can’t proceed until she gets her last drain out and they discharge her from the hospital. They want to send her to a skilled nursing facility across from the hospital, downtown, for therapy and to be able to do radiation without the long drive back and forth home. We are hoping she is approved for this. If not, it’s home she goes when discharge is complete. The oncologist also wants to change up her current chemo and immunotherapy, but we will table this after radiation and see how the spots on her spine respond. Mom is doing good with walking, and she is able to do things on her own. She is just weak, tired and over being at the hospital. Please keep sending prayers for her!! She is a tough lady and I know she can handle this. It’s just a lot to process at this time.

10/29/2024

Look at this tough lady!!