Phinley Huisken is the four-year-old daughter of Travis and Jessie (Cooper) Huisken. She has Acute Myeloid Leukemia. 

The Huiskens live near Pensacola, Florida. Travis is a son of Bob and Cindy Huisken, formerly of Chandler. 

Phinley’s original diagnosis was about a year ago. She was experiencing joint pain. Her mom took her to the doctor and it was thought that she simply had a virus. A few days later, her face and the gums in her mouth started to swell. 

Jessie was concerned, so on Friday, October 15, 2021, she took Phinley back to their primary care doctor. The doctor detected a heart murmur and sent them on to Pensacola for immediate care. 

There, the doctor did a blood panel and discovered that Phinley had an extremely high white blood cell count – a classic symptom of leukemia. It was at this point that the Huiskens were told the devastating news that their daughter had cancer. 

From that hospital, Phinley was taken by ambulance to Sacred Heart Children’s Cancer Hospital in Florida. Phinley was very, very sick. Her cancer was very aggressive and fast-growing. 

By Wednesday, October 20 – Phinley’s fourth birthday – she was intubated.  By Friday they were concerned she had fungal infection in her sinuses and there were no specialists at that hospital to handle that situation.  They did not expect her to live.  

Here is a portion of her Dad’s Facebook post regarding that time in her treatment:

On Wednesday, which was Phinley’s 4th birthday, she was to be sedated for an MRI scan. They canceled the scan at the last minute, due to concerns with the appearance of an infection in her sinuses. She was intubated and put on a ventilator so they could conduct a biopsy of her sinuses. They also did a CT scan. 

The early information from the biopsy was that she had a fungal infection. These are not uncommon following a diagnosis of AML, and it is nearly always fatal. The CT scan indicated the infection from the sinuses was within a millimeter or so of the brain. The ENT surgeon at Sacred Heart advised us that Sacred Heart is not equipped to handle that specific high risk procedure. 

The CT scan also revealed several spots in the brain that some of the doctors suspected were fungal infections. They believed the fungus from the sinuses perhaps broke off and relocated to parts of the brain and were now running wild. 

The doctors gave Jessie and I the “I’m sorry we were unable to save your daughter” speech. They told us if it was a fungal infection in the brain, her odds of mortality were near certain. 

Because she was so stable, they made the decision to have her flown to Shands Children’s Hospital in Gainesville. If she had any small chance for survival at all, she would likely require numerous brain surgeries and/or other operations that Shands was just better equipped to handle. They indicated the odds of surviving the brain surgeries were also incredibly low. The message was very clear: Jessie and I were going to lose our daughter, but she would be in the very best hands for giving her the best odds possible. 

Thursday evening, Phinley’s jet lifted off the runway from Pensacola. Our phones, and the phones of our family members, were busy with people indicating they were praying, that their churches were praying, that complete strangers were praying. People stopping activities of all kinds to take a moment to say a prayer for Phinley. Some people were fervently praying morning and night. 

The biopsy results started coming back. Nothing official at first, because they have several labs do several tests. But the tests were starting to reveal her sinuses may never have had a fungal infection. More and more test results came back, indicating the same thing: no fungus. What appeared to be a fungal infection is now believed to have simply been an accumulation of leukemic cells in the tissue. This would resolve itself with the chemotherapy. 

The past two days have been nothing but good news coming from all corners of this fight. With no fungus in the sinuses, it is assumed there is none in the brain. The spots in the brain are now also believed to be collections of leukemic cells which will resolve with chemotherapy. The spots in the brain never created excess pressure in the brain. Her brain should be fine. The tests they run on her blood are looking great. She is responding to chemo well. Everything is looking better than we understood was reasonable to hope for. Some people might even find themselves wondering if a miracle occurred here. 

It was here at Shands that they were able to run tests to determine more information about Phinley’s leukemia. She had AML with the FLT3gene. This is a common genetic change in this type of leukemia – it is found in about 40 percent of young patients who are diagnosed with AML. 

This was not a good sign – her cancer had returned while she was still in treatment. The next plan is to give Phinley a bone marrow transplant. Before that can happen, they need to get rid of all the cancer in her blood and bone marrow. 

They have determined that Phinley’s older brother, Harper, is a 100 percent bone marrow match for her. 

In July, Phinley was admitted to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. St. Jude’s had a trial drug they wanted the Huiskens to try. Unfortunately, a few weeks later they knew that the trial drug did not work and Phinley’s cancer came back again. 

A few weeks ago, doctors talked with Phinley’s family about hospice and taking her home. However, they re-started the chemo that had successfully killed her leukemia in the past, in hopes of getting it under control and giving her relief. 

Doctors have not given the Huisken family a promising prognosis, but for the last couple of weeks Phinley has been doing well.  Throughout this past year, the Huisken family has asked for and received support and prayer from family, friends, and even complete strangers from all over the country. While one doctor said Phinley had no hope of recovery, another doctor was more optimistic with a 10 percent chance of recovery. 

Phinley’s parents have been very public about her battle and their faith in God. They have asked for prayers and have seen a direct correlation between Phinley’s improvement and an increase in prayer on her behalf. 

Here is one of her Dad’s recent posts, asking people to pray for their daughter:

Jessie and I are introverts. I work in corrections, and she used to work in Child Welfare. We’ve always been careful about what information we put on the internet. That’s the primary reason our last names are different on Facebook. 

But when our little girl fell ill, we knew we needed to petition the One True King on her behalf. 

And we were convinced our voices wouldn’t be enough. 

We have over-shared. Sometimes in ways that cause us much discomfort and even compromise our safety. We needed people to praise the Creator with us for this outstanding work of creation, and to be thankful with us for each and every beautiful moment we’ve been given with this perfect work. 

We knew emotional investment would fuel more powerful prayer. 

We still don’t know how this will end. But we know God has allowed our earthly odds to be stacked as impossibly against us as they could be. This will make it easy to give Him credit for a positive outcome. 

We also know every time we have asked for prayer, our Spiritual army has grown. The once passing interest of a few has become the kneeling wailing of hundreds. 

With lower odds than ever, and more Prayer Warriors than ever, Jessie and I have decided to call on the promises of God and continue efforts toward the transplant we believe would save her. 

Keep the faith.

On Thursday, Sept. 15, Phinley will have more tests to see if the current chemotherapy is working or if her family should take her home and enjoy the time they have left. 

Phinley is a very out-going little girl and her spirit and love for Jesus and other people is evident even as she goes through this immense battle. The family loves having the support, encouragement and prayers of others. Jesse talked about this in a Facebook post last week:

It’s so hard to not look for any little sign to try and figure out if this is working or not; to try and know for certain if we will get to transplant.  We feel anger sometimes, we feel discouragement and exhaustion. We know we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and the wait to find out the outcome is agonizing at times. 

But we have also felt surrounded by the love and encouragement of God through #teamphinley , and have seen needs we didn’t even fully recognize we had be met by complete strangers over and over again.

You can find Travis Huisken and Jessie Cooper on Facebook if you want to follow Phinley’s story.