Woman Goes into Hospital for Colon Surgery, Wakes Up to Hysterectomy After Doctors Found Tumor 'Cemented to Uterus' (Exclusive)

Devlynn Cyr, 38, thought she was having colon surgery but woke up to learn she had undergone a hysterectomy due to discovery of stage 3 cancer

When Devlynn Cyr went into the hospital for a colectomy in September 2023, she thought she was getting surgery to repair her colon, which had ruptured after a long battle with chronic pain, constipation and inflammation.

She was told she was getting an ostomy — an external opening in her abdomen where waste is excreted into a bag, as the Mayo Clinic explains.

But instead, Devlynn, 38, woke up to the news that she had stage 3 colon cancer — and while she was under anesthesia, doctors had to give her a hysterectomy because, as she shared in a TikTok that was seen by 1.5 million people, “everything was like concrete.”

As the Alberta, Canada, resident explains to PEOPLE exclusively, “My husband gets a phone call halfway through surgery saying, 'Here's the problem. We found a tumor and it's cemented to my uterus.'”

When the hospital called, Greg Cyr tells PEOPLE that, “My first thought was that, ‘Wow, they're done already? That's good.’ I thought that was a good sign that things went smoothly.”

Instead, Greg was told Devlynn had a tumor the size of a baseball. “In order to safely remove the tumor, they need to do a hysterectomy,” he says.

“Okay, so this is happening and this just got a lot more real,” says Greg, adding he was afraid his wife of six months would “be mad at me and resent me for having to make that decision. We had talked about having children.”

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But as the doctors explained to Greg, because of what the cancer had done to Devlynn’s Fallopian tubes and uterus, “there wouldn't be a possibility anyway,” he recalls.

It meant Devlynn — a former paramedic who had miscarried a baby a few months earlier — woke up to a new, unexpected reality.

“All of a sudden, my husband sits on the bed and he's like, ‘I gotta tell you something,’ and my heart sank. He said, ‘I had to make a decision, and they gave you a hysterectomy, but you have no ostomy bag.’”

“I couldn't process the hysterectomy because I'm like, ‘I now don't have an option of children?” she tells PEOPLE, saying she wanted to know, “Did they retrieve some eggs for me to be able to have children in the future? Like, do they even think of these things?”

Her eggs weren’t retrieved. Heartbroken, Devlynn turned to TikTok to see what others in a similar situation were saying about cancer and fertility.

“A lot of the TikTok videos that I found were just, ‘You can do this and you've got this and you're gonna be ok. And yes, it sucks.’ But nobody tells you the real and raw in-between. I couldn't find anything about how they were coping or the breakdowns or just how real this really is.”

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“I'm an anxious person. I can't find anything to relate to,” she remembers thinking. “So I'm gonna do it myself.”

She started sharing “the drama-filled ups and downs of having cancer. The hardship on a marriage or a relationship.”

Devlynn says she had 88 followers when she made her first video on September 26.

“I woke up to almost 13,000.”

She doesn’t shy away from sharing the brutal realities of cancer — for example, the painful constipation and uncontrollable bowel movements that can come with her treatment. 

“Some people are like, ‘Why are you posting this? We don't wanna know about your poop on the floor that your husband had to pick up because I couldn't make it to a bathroom.’ And I'm like, ‘But this is the reality when you're a caretaker through this surgery, through everything.’”

But the naysayers are in the minority, as Devlynn shares to PEOPLE. “A lot of people were like, 'Thank you. This is exactly how I felt. I was scared, too. Now, I know that I don't need to be.'”

She’s been told her cancer has a 50% chance of recurring if she doesn’t undergo chemotherapy, so Devlynn tells PEOPLE she’ll soon begin the six-month process. “I don't want to, but I don't wanna die either.”

And she's already been documenting the initial chemo steps — getting a port line installed — on her TikTok account.

But while Devlynn tells PEOPLE “I don't feel strong,” her husband disagrees.

“She really is so strong, like what she's going through and the way she is, and she's putting it out there and helping so many,” Greg tells PEOPLE.

“I sit for hours and I read comments,” Devlynn, who also created a Facebook messenger group — with her real account — for anyone to join and share their health journey, she says.

“If anybody messages me, I take time out of my day to be like, ‘Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate you.’”

“Nobody is alone,” she continues. “I really hope that people find solace in seeing that we're working through this. It's okay to not be okay sometimes.”

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