Blog 3: When the Doctor Walked In With That Face.

There's a Face Doctors Make.

There's a face doctors make before they say something that will change your life.

It's not dramatic. It's quiet. Careful. The kind of expression that tells you everything before a single word is spoken.

On July 25, 2023, I was still in the hospital — still learning to live in a body I barely recognized — when my nurse practitioner came in for her morning check. She was usually warm. Chatty. She'd stay and talk. That morning, she was quiet. She didn't stay long. She left without looking directly at me.

I knew.

The Words That Rearranged Everything.

An hour later, she came back. The surgeon was with her.

They stood at my bedside, and the surgeon began: "We've received the pathology report. There's no easy way to say this."

Then, in what felt like slow motion:

"You have colon cancer."

Time stopped.

He kept talking. His mouth was still moving. But all I heard was the sound of Charlie Brown's teacher — blah, blah, blah. I could not hold a single word. My mind had gone somewhere else entirely. I was thinking about my children. My husband. My future. Everything I had planned that suddenly felt uncertain.

I snapped back when I realized he was asking if I had questions. I said no. Not at this time. I needed everyone to leave so I could breathe.

Saying It Out Loud for the First Time.

The room got very quiet when they left.

Just me. Four walls. And a truth I hadn't said out loud yet.

I picked up my phone and opened FaceTime. I needed to see my husband's face. I didn't even know what I was going to say — I just knew I couldn't be alone with this for one more second.

He answered. And I didn't say anything at first. I just looked at him through that little screen. He took one look at my face and I watched something shift in him immediately.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

He always could read me. Always. Before I could even find the words, he already knew something was broken.

I looked at him on the camera and said — for the very first time out loud — "I have cancer."

I don't know what I expected to feel when I finally said it. But the feelings hit me all at once.

Fear. Uncertainty. Anxiety. Defeat.

Not just emotions, but physical things. Something heavy had landed on my chest and was not moving.

I swear he made it to that hospital in five minutes. He walked in and just held me. And then he started crying — really crying — begging God out loud to take it from me. To give him the burden instead. To let him carry it.

He said, "I would rather have cancer again than you have to go through this."

And something in me broke wide open. Because I could not take seeing him that way. I had been trying to hold myself together but watching the man I love cry out to God on my behalf — that undid me completely.

After he left, I made a few more calls.

My mother. My father. My closest friends.

There is something about telling your parents. Something different from every other call. You never stop being somebody's child, no matter how old you are — and having to say those words to the two people who brought you into this world, who prayed over you, who never imagined they'd be hearing this on the other end of a phone — that was its own kind of heavy.

I said the words again and again until they started to feel real. I knew I had cancer. I said it out loud. I prayed about it.

And I let it go. You know how they say give it to God and let it go. I did.

At least — I thought I did...

—Von Unfiltered

Stage 3 (2023) · Stage 4 (2025) · Remission (2026)