We Found Out My Husband Had Cancer By Voicemail.

It was Oct. 28, 2023. Gavin woke up late that Saturday and came out of the bedroom with his hand cupped around one side of his neck.

“Hey, honey, does this side of my neck look bigger?”

I looked at him, expecting to see a pimple or bug bite. But instead, I saw a bulge in the middle of his neck. I moved in quickly and poked it. It was hard, and the tissue around it was squishy.

“Does that hurt?” I asked as I tapped it.

“Does it hurt to swallow?”

He swallowed and shook his head.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor today,” I suggested.

We started with an appointment at the neighborhood walk-in clinic. That led to Gavin needing an appointment with his primary care physician, who ushered him right in for an ultrasound that afternoon. As we waited for the results to come back, my husband drew a circle around the lump to measure if it was growing.

It grew every day. It was hard not to look at it while we spoke. He’d catch my eyes shifting from his eyes to his neck and back to his eyes.

When we finally got the results back, we learned he needed a biopsy. The earliest biopsy appointment available wasn’t for three weeks. That didn’t work for me. I told him to call a different office, and I’d do the same, and we’d work the system.

We sat on hold for hours trying to get a live person. We did that for what felt like days on end until, finally, the elevator music stopped, and I heard a woman’s voice. I introduced myself and Gavin, and we explained our situation and begged the lady on the other end of the phone for help.

“Can you please help us get in sooner? We can go anywhere in Arizona. We will drive a few hours if it means he can get a biopsy next week.”

She put us on hold, and we prayed. When she returned to the phone, she said the earliest appointment was Nov. 10, which was only a week away. We took it.

While we waited for his biopsy and the results, I filled my time with Thanksgiving preparations. I ensured both my ovens worked fine and cleaned them after every use. Obsessively.

I tried three different turkey recipes. Thanksgiving is Gavin’s favorite meal of the year, and he loved that I downloaded different turkey recipes for him to try before our families came to our brand-new home for our very first Thanksgiving. I tried a Mayo-based one, which Gavin and I loved. I also tried a wet-brine recipe shared by a social media chef and a dry-brine rub shared by a different social media chef. I made turkey pot pie, turkey tetrazzini, and turkey meatballs with the leftovers.

Gavin called and left messages with everyone he could for weeks on end, asking where his biopsy results were.

Thanksgiving Day was everything I had hoped for. Every dish came out at the right time, cooked through, and with just the right amount left over to send everyone home with a little doggie bag.

Being holiday hosts in our own home was something I’d craved for most of my adult life, and I knew the day’s significance.

I looked at Gavin throughout the day and paused to enjoy the surge of love running through me. When my eyes caught the bulge poking out of his neck, my breath would catch in my chest. I knew there was a looming threat and a possibility we could learn really terrible news any day.

It was the Tuesday after Thanksgiving when the other shoe dropped. I was driving to the grocery store for next week’s groceries when I heard my phone from inside my purse. Before I got out of the car, I checked my messages and saw one from Gavin. He’d forwarded me a voice memo from his primary care physician.

“Hey, Gavin. I just got the path report on you two minutes ago, and it did come back as a malignant squamous cell carcinoma. So you need to see an ear, nose, and throat surgeon for staging, removal, and all kinds of stuff, so we need to get this going. If you don’t have one of your own, I’m happy to refer someone I know and trust to do a good job.”

The voicemail continued with his contact information and an apology for the news not being better.

“We gotta get after this, Gavin. Get in to see the ear, nose, and throat doctor and get this thing fixed. Let me know if you have questions. Bye-bye.”

My body was numb. I couldn’t move. My belly was one cramped ball. I felt like I should cry but couldn’t. We had known cancer was a big possibility, but hearing it still shocked me. I put the car in drive. Then I blinked and was standing in the kitchen, staring at Gavin with my keys in my hand.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said.

There was a thickness in the house that hadn’t been there before. I didn’t want to make loud noises or put my purse down. I stood still and watched him, which made him uncomfortable. In between forwarding me the voicemail and arriving home, he made an appointment for an ENT consultation 10 days later. That didn’t sit well with us, but we felt lost.

It felt like I was moving through mud, going through the motions of everyday life. We were both frustrated that it was already a month after finding the lump and we weren’t any closer to treating it.

The anxiety I felt in my body was at a 10. If I felt it, I knew Gavin was feeling it even worse. My heart ached for him. And I couldn’t shake the disappointment of how we learned of Gavin’s cancer. By voicemail.

The next afternoon, I had to get out of the house. I drove to a store to buy Gavin’s kids Christmas stocking stuffers. I had so much anger and I needed a place to put it. While sitting in the parking lot, I looked up Gavin’s primary physician’s phone number and punched the call icon. The answering service picked up, giving me options for various extensions. As I listened, it dawned on me: This was my next role. I was becoming a caregiver and an advocate.

When I heard the beep to leave a message, I let out my anger on my husband’s primary care physician’s answering service. I told his doctor how disappointed I was in the way we learned Gavin had a life-altering and potentially life-threatening disease.

“Do better,” I said and hung up.

A few days after I left the sassy voicemail, the doctor emailed Gavin and said he’d done all he could for Gavin and maybe Gavin could pass that on to me so I didn’t call again.

Gavin wrote back, “I can tell her. I can’t make any promises, though.”

As we prepared for doctor’s appointments and cancer treatment, we did what we could to participate in Christmas gatherings and parties. It was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t care about the holidays, nor did I want to be around people. Every smile I plastered on felt forced and fake.

Gavin wanted to experience everything Christmas 2023 offered, just in case it was his last one. He wanted to make sure he told the kids and me everything he wanted to and gave as much of his time and attention to them as he could.

He’d say things to me like, “I know you’d find someone else if this took me out. You’re such an angel; you’ll be fine.”

I appreciated that he wanted a clear consciousness and was working on his own personal development, but I didn’t want him to walk into cancer treatment thinking he didn’t have to fight like hell to finish. His compliments and reassurances felt like cop-outs.

“I swear to God, Gavin. If you die, I’ll be so pissed at you.”

Before my husband was diagnosed with cancer, every holiday felt like the biggest day of the year. Everything had to look perfect, taste amazing, smell like heaven on Earth. I wanted everyone around me to feel at peace and remember every detail of our time together. Every gift had to have meaning and last a lifetime. And I didn’t just put that pressure on myself for Christmas. I had the highest of expectations for Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and even the Fourth of July.

We spent New Year’s Day with his chemotherapy doctor, mapping out his sessions. We spent Valentine’s Day in the radiation wing of the hospital. And when my birthday arrived this year, I only wanted to walk down the street, holding his hand. I didn’t care what street or at what time of day we went for a walk. Just having my husband alive next to me was all that mattered.

Hearing that life-altering news in such a cold, disconnected way rocked us both. We knew cancer was a possibility, but we weren’t truthfully prepared for it. Without empathy from a healthcare professional or someone to hold our hands, we felt like we were thrown into the trenches by ourselves, trailblazing a path forward.

But then his treatment started, and our experiences weren’t anything alike. The radiation and chemotherapy destroyed the cancer cells in his body but nearly killed him in the process. He wanted to quit treatment, and I was the enforcer that drove him to his appointments. Some days, while I waited for him to finish treatment, I’d sit on the hospital floor with one hand on my belly and the other on my heart just to keep from falling apart. Walking with him through his cancer journey forced me to surrender any expectations of outcomes. Everything was out of my control. All I could focus on was the moment.

Neither of us are the same people we were before his diagnosis came in. Supporting him through cancer was the most humbling, heartbreaking, and eye-opening phase of my life.

He’s now eight months post-treatment, and gratefully, no reoccurrence has shown up in any scan he’s had since his treatment stopped. That is something we celebrate every three months.

Now, as we approach the holiday season and the end to the worst year of our lives, we’re looking at the celebrations and gatherings from the perspective of what matters ― the fact that he’s still alive, we’re still together, and we can have our families around us one more day.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.