What They Couldn’t See on the Scan: A True Story of an Impossible Healing

By Valerie Warren, as told to Hannah Bemis

They told me I was going to die.
Not in a vague, someday-everyone-does kind of way. A doctor looked me in the eyes and said, “You did not hear me. You’re going to die.” I was supposed to have eleven months to live. That was in 2022. Today, I am still here and more certain than ever that miracles are real.

It all started in July of that year. I was working on our property when it hit me that I’d been feeling extra tired, more tired than I’d ever been. I told my husband, “Something is off; when we go back to town, I really think I need to go to the doctor.”

At my doctor’s appointment they did some bloodwork, telling me they’d give me a call if they saw anything alarming. It was all very casual until they called me while I was still driving home, telling me I needed to come to the emergency room immediately.

Valerie and husband Tony (center), and kids Heath, Lorissa, Hope, and Victoria (left to right)

In simple terms, my liver was “jammed up” and nothing could move. I was hospitalized while they put a stent in my biliary duct to open things up. It was during that procedure that the doctor saw a spot on my pancreas. On July 22, I was told I had pancreatic cancer. The “spot” turned out to be a tumor at the head of my pancreas, big enough that it was pinching off that whole area and blocking anything from flowing through.

“You did not hear me.
You’re going to die.”

As bad as that sounds, I was told it was only stage one and that with chemotherapy and Whipple surgery, I would very likely survive. While in the hospital, I had developed pancreatitis, so before releasing me to go home, they did some additional scans to confirm the infection was gone. It was on one of those scans that they noticed a spot on my liver. By the next week that spot had grown, and there were additional spots. On September 7, my original diagnosis of stage one pancreatic cancer was abruptly changed to a stage four diagnosis.

I was with my husband and my best friend when the doctor gave us the grim news. “You have stage four pancreatic cancer, and there is no cure. All we can do is give you palliative chemotherapy. As of right now we’re giving you one month to three years, but the average survival is eleven months.”

My husband and best friend were, of course, crying, but I was sitting there dry-eyed, just processing. The doctor must have interpreted this as shock because she repeated herself in even starker terms: “You did not hear me. You’re going to die.”

Something shifted in me at that moment. All I can say is that I just knew I could trust God. Focusing on the doctor, I said, “I did hear you, but you cannot give me my end date. The only person who can tell me when I’m going die is my Lord.”

I continued my palliative treatments for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023. During that year the support of my faith community was incredible. Groups of ladies from the local Open Bible church, Church of the Cascades, dropped off gift baskets, came to visit to just sit with me or watch a movie, or stopped by to pray.

Their efforts really touched me. The remarkable thing is that my family didn’t even attend Church of the Cascades; we had attended in a previous season but had left for a time. Despite this, the people there were a constant support. It wasn’t long before my husband and I made the decision to return, knowing that this was truly our church home.

“Why aren’t you asking for a miracle?”

It was actually a Church of the Cascades ladies’ retreat that became the pivot point for my cancer story. On a Wednesday night in October 2023, I was praying in preparation for the retreat. I was praying all the things I usually did, “Lord, I trust you, and whatever you want to do with me, just use me.” Only this time, the Lord interrupted me:“Why aren’t you asking for a miracle?”

I didn’t have an answer. I had been saying over and over that I trusted Him, and I was quick to ask for a miracle for others, but I hadn’t articulated that request for myself. That night in bed I laid my hands on my belly, simply saying, “Lord, I’m asking right now for that miracle. Will you remove my cancer? Can I just live?”

The next day I was scheduled to have a CT scan before heading to the ladies’ retreat, but the appointment didn’t go as planned. The technicians were unable to access my veins, so they said we’d have to reschedule. As I climbed into the truck with my husband, I said, “Babe, this isn’t about a canceled CT. I really feel like the Lord is going to heal me this weekend at the retreat and that’s why this is canceled. He’s going to show me proof of His healing during my rescheduled scan after I get back.”

The retreat was amazing. The last night was saturated in prayer; everyone was praying for everyone. I was being held and prayed for by my friend Sheryl, and for the first time since my initial diagnosis, I cried and cried, finally saying out loud, “I don’t want to die!”

On the final morning of the retreat, a few friends and I decided to take one last picture on the beach. As we were standing by the water, a group of three ladies from another church who were attending the retreat came walking up. I had never met these women, but they wanted to tell me that during the prayer time the previous evening, they had seen light surrounding me.

“You were literally glowing,” they said. My friends responded by telling these women my story, after which all of them prayed for me again. I was in awe at how those women had described the sight of me glowing. Looking back, I often wonder, “Is that the moment, God? Is that the moment when you were healing me?”

My rescheduled scan happened the Wednesday after my return. The results were emailed to me through MyChart (an online medical chart) first. As I read the results, it seemed to me like there was no cancer found. I ran downstairs to where my daughter was and said, “Victoria, read this. What do you think it means?”

She read it and said, “It sounds like there’s nothing there!”

“Right,” I said, “Don’t get too excited because I’m not a doctor and I could be missing something.” I called my husband and told him, “I think it’s gone!” He was driving and had to pull over because he was bawling. We were both crying, but I kept saying, “Let’s not get too excited. We’ve got to meet with the doctor tomorrow.”

Our appointment with the doctor the next day was strangely routine at first. “Yeah, your numbers look great. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing,” he said.

I replied, “Wait. Hold on a sec. Can you go look at my latest scan because if I’m not mistaken, it looks like they’re not seeing anything anymore.” He pulled out my chart and after looking at it said, “Oh my gosh. You’re right…they’re saying there’s nothing there.”

You might wonder how the doctor didn’t notice this without my pointing it out, but don’t we often miss what we’re not looking for? Frankly, he was convinced I was going to die. When I talk to the doctors now, they tell me that they didn’t expect me to make it past six months. They would glance at my scans and see what they expected to see — “Yep, she’s still got it.” They didn’t see the scan saying the cancer had gone away because stage four pancreatic cancer doesn’t go away. Except this time, it did.

…stage four pancreatic cancer doesn’t go away. Except this time, it did.

After verifying that my scan hadn’t gotten mixed up with someone else’s, my medical team sent me to get a second opinion at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. After the specialists there scanned me with their top-of-the-line equipment, they saw once again that, impossibly, I was clear. The cancer was all gone. That was in January of 2024.

Since that time, I’ve had scans every three months, and I am still cancer free. I wish I could record the conversations I have with the doctors each time. They can’t fathom it. “This is all new to me,” they’ll say, “I’m not sure where to go from here.”

No one expected me to live, and yet here I am. I’ve been able to share my testimony with hundreds of people through social media, through my business, and at a recent women’s event. The most precious thing to come out of all of this is that I got to lead both a friend and my mother-in-law to the Lord.

For those of you who are faced with an impossible situation or diagnosis, I just want to say, trust in the One who made you. Don’t focus on the thing; focus on the Lord. In Jesus we have hope, and God really can do the impossible. He will use your story, no matter what. Trust in the One who made you.

---

About the Author