Not in a vague, someday-everyone-does kind of way. A doctor looked me in the eyes and said, \u201cYou did not hear me. You\u2019re going to die.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all started in July of that year. I was working on our property when it hit me that I\u2019d been feeling extra tired, more tired than I\u2019d ever been. I told my husband, \u201cSomething is off; when we go back to town, I really think I need to go to the doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At my doctor\u2019s appointment they did some bloodwork, telling me they\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valerie and husband Tony (center), and kids Heath, Lorissa, Hope, and Victoria (left to right)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In simple terms, my liver was \u201cjammed up\u201d 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 \u201cspot\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou did not hear me. <\/mark> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was with my husband and my best friend when the doctor gave us the grim news. \u201cYou have stage four pancreatic cancer, and there is no cure. All we can do is give you palliative chemotherapy. As of right now we\u2019re giving you one month to three years, but the average survival is eleven months.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n 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: \u201cYou did not hear me. You\u2019re going to die.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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, \u201cI did hear you, but you cannot give me my end date. The only person who can tell me when I\u2019m going die is my Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their efforts really touched me. The remarkable thing is that my family didn\u2019t 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\u2019t long before my husband and I made the decision to return, knowing that this was truly our church home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you asking for a miracle?\u201d<\/mark><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n It was actually a Church of the Cascades ladies\u2019 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, \u201cLord, I trust you, and whatever you want to do with me, just use me.\u201d Only this time, the Lord interrupted me:\u201cWhy aren\u2019t you asking for a miracle?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t articulated that request for myself. That night in bed I laid my hands on my belly, simply saying, \u201cLord, I\u2019m asking right now for that miracle. Will you remove my cancer? Can I just live?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day I was scheduled to have a CT scan before heading to the ladies\u2019 retreat, but the appointment didn\u2019t go as planned. The technicians were unable to access my veins, so they said we\u2019d have to reschedule. As I climbed into the truck with my husband, I said, \u201cBabe, this isn\u2019t about a canceled CT. I really feel like the Lord is going to heal me this weekend at the retreat and that\u2019s why this is canceled. He\u2019s going to show me proof of His healing during my rescheduled scan after I get back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n 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, \u201cI don\u2019t want to die!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou were literally glowing,\u201d 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, \u201cIs that the moment, God? Is that the moment when you were healing me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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, \u201cVictoria, read this. What do you think it means?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She read it and said, \u201cIt sounds like there\u2019s nothing there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cRight,\u201d I said, \u201cDon\u2019t get too excited because I\u2019m not a doctor and I could be missing something.\u201d I called my husband and told him, \u201cI think it\u2019s gone!\u201d He was driving and had to pull over because he was bawling. We were both crying, but I kept saying, \u201cLet\u2019s not get too excited. We\u2019ve got to meet with the doctor tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our appointment with the doctor the next day was strangely routine at first. \u201cYeah, your numbers look great. We\u2019ll just keep doing what we\u2019re doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I replied, \u201cWait. Hold on a sec. Can you go look at my latest scan because if I\u2019m not mistaken, it looks like they\u2019re not seeing anything anymore.\u201d He pulled out my chart and after looking at it said, \u201cOh my gosh. You\u2019re right…they\u2019re saying there\u2019s nothing there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might wonder how the doctor didn\u2019t notice this without my pointing it out, but don\u2019t we often miss what we\u2019re 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\u2019t expect me to make it past six months. They would glance at my scans and see what they expected to see \u2014 \u201cYep, she\u2019s still got it.\u201d They didn\u2019t see the scan saying the cancer had gone away because stage four pancreatic cancer doesn\u2019t go away. Except this time, it did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n …stage four pancreatic cancer doesn\u2019t go away. Except<\/strong><\/mark><\/strong><\/mark> this time, it did.<\/strong><\/mark><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n After verifying that my scan hadn\u2019t gotten mixed up with someone else\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since that time, I\u2019ve 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\u2019t fathom it. \u201cThis is all new to me,\u201d they\u2019ll say, \u201cI\u2019m not sure where to go from here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one expected me to live, and yet here I am. I\u2019ve been able to share my testimony with hundreds of people through social media, through my business, and at a recent women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valerie Warren<\/strong> is a lifelong resident of Central Oregon and currently resides in beautiful Bend, where she is an active member of Church of the Cascades. She and her husband, Tony, have been married for nearly thirty-one years and together they have three daughters, a son-in-law, and a beloved grandson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valerie works part-time alongside her husband and runs her own business, which she sees as a platform to build meaningful relationships with women and share her faith in Jesus. Her greatest joy comes from spending quality time with her family and friends.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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, \u201cYou did not hear me. You\u2019re going to die.\u201d I was supposed to have eleven months to live. That was in 2022. Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":22849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[396],"class_list":["post-22848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-jul-aug25"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Valerie](\"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Valerie-and-husband-Tony-center-and-kids-Heath-Lorissa-Hope-and-Victoria-left-to-right-1024x569.jpeg\")
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You\u2019re going to die.\u201d<\/mark><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/The-Bible-Study-prayer-warriors-from-Church-of-the-Cascades-who-stood-by-Valerie-through-her-cancer-journey-768x1024.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Valerie-and-her-roommates-from-the-pivotal-ladies-retreat-posing-for-one-final-picture-at-the-Oregon-Coast-958x1024.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Valeries-amazing-medical-team-nurse-Melissa-middle-best-friend-Tammy-right-and-Dr.-Josh-in-the-background-978x1024.jpg\")
\n\n\n\nAbout the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Valerie-bio-photo-844x1024.jpeg\")
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