2023-10-02 05:11:00
She wants to turn the page… That of a story that stole a year of her life: “I was nothing, no one anymore” book Laetitia (1), 41-year-old dracénoise.
As Operation Pink October begins, she opens the doors of her house to us. Objective, raise awareness regarding breast cancer, at all ages.
After the release of a book, a television appearance and an article in a magazine, the mother wants to confide “for the last time” she explains, on this disenchanted interlude which has become part of her daily life.
A pain in the chest
It all started in October 2012: “I left my job as a civil servant in Dijon to return to my parents in Draguignan. I wanted to get a pastry certificate and open my own little tea room,” smiles the Dracénoise. “I love baking!”
She first found a job as an employee in an association in Nice. (2) At the time, his companion was in training in Toulouse.
“At thirty, you don’t have breast cancer”
A few weeks later, she felt a lump in her left breast. It’s painful, palpable: “We were not affected by the cancer be you in our family. It didn’t speak to me.” she continues, seated on the gray sofa in the living room.
She consults a gynecologist in Fréjus: “At thirty, you don’t have breast cancer, and cancer doesn’t hurt!” he tells him.
It’s a fibroid, to be removed just if it becomes “embarrassing regarding the bra”. Two months following local treatment, the lump grew: “I still didn’t imagine it was cancer, I had to go into denial…” supposes the young woman.
When asked, a surgeon from Nice asked to see her mammogram… It was not prescribed for her.
“It’s serious, you have grade 3 cancer”
Once the examination was finally carried out, she underwent outpatient surgery for a double fibroid. But while she is staying with a friend in Dijon, she receives a call: “We have to go back, it’s very serious.”
Back in Nice with her mother, her doctor informs her that she is affected “Grade 3 cancer requires emergency surgery.”
“My life is slipping away from me, I no longer control it”
Supported by her loved ones, the trained social worker copes. At her side, her companion comforts her: “You sink, I sink with you… We are in the same boat”.
March 6, 2013 is “day from hell”, remembers Laetitia. The caring medical team at the Antoine Lacassagne Center (3) in Nice informed him of the side effects of the disease.
“As I live far away, I am told everything at once. I am told that I am no longer going to master anything, that I am going to lose my hair. I find my hair magnificent! With my teeth, it is my beauty standards! Smiles the young woman with brown hair. This is the moment when my life escapes me, I no longer control it”. Laetitia is in tears, she fears the worst for her femininity.
The Nice surgeon reassures her: “I will do everything I can to heal you.”
“The surgeon saved my life”
The intervention takes place on March 14. When she wakes up, when she places her hands on her chest, it’s relief. We removed the entire lymph node chain, avoiding removal of the breasts. “The surgeon detected an additional metastasized lymph node, he went very far to look for it. I am convinced that he saved my life.”
That same day she met her psychologist, one of her “best encounters”she will say.
“Painful” hair loss
Laetitia then begins writing a logbook which she will publish in book form the following year. “I mightn’t speak, so I wrote, every day.”
Tested, she breaks telephone links and only communicates by emails and messages. But some of her friends are distancing themselves… Were they frightened by the illness? “My best friend never wrote to me once more. I felt alone, abandoned. But I understood later that there might have been ten million of us around me, I would still have felt alone.”
The chemotherapy sessions – she will learn their benefits at the end of the treatment – cause her to gain 25 kg. Then comes the dreaded loss of his hair.
“The worst thing when it falls is that it stings and it hurts!” she explains.
She is suddenly overcome by emotion when she recalls the moment when, “bald”, she faces the looks of her parents: “It was the first time I saw my father cry.”
With bright eyes, she continues: “In the mirror, I saw a black line. No more eyelashes, just a look that no longer has expression.”
“I was dehumanized”
Supposed to bring comfort, words like “good luck” spoken by those around her make her react: “It wasn’t regarding courage, it was regarding survival!” she exclaims.
Then she begins her 33 radiotherapy sessions at the end of August, in Mougins. The back and forth exhausts him: “Stop crying, I’m not going to make it,” says a caregiver.
“I understand that I’m delaying her, when she has 60 pairs of breasts to irradiate, remembers Laetitia, I felt like a rib of beef…I was dehumanized.”
On October 17, 2013, the last session “finally” arrived and the implementation of treatment with hormonal therapy: “It’s finish, the oncologist tells him, See you in six months.” Joy is confused.
While medicine has taken over “her agenda” for a year, she is once once more alone to face the course of her life. “Can I at least keep my psychologist?” she will retort with humor…
In December 2013, she “finds a status” and a social worker position in the Department.
Six months later, when the banks closed their doors to her because of her medical history, she accessed property, thanks to the help of her “terrific” parents, she concludes.
Today, she wants to raise awareness regarding screening. As part of the Pink October operation, she is launching a call for mobilization around the pink march which will take place Thursday October 12 at 5:30 p.m., in Draguignan.
1. The first name was changed, at his request
2. An immense outpouring of solidarity in his professional environment allowed him to continue to complete his care journey.
3. The center specializes in the fight once morest cancer
Laetitia now wants to turn the page Photo Florian Escoffier .
“Charli chose us, it’s our greatest gift”
During her treatment course, Laetitia learns that the treatments have an influence on sterility. The protocol allowing her eggs to be frozen with a view to a possible pregnancy was not granted to her. The reason ? Her breast cancer is hormonal, it’s risky. “So it will be haphazard,” says a gynecologist.
The young woman was devastated: “In my head, it was ruined… I was thirty years old, I had not planned to be a mother, she explains. But in a snap of my fingers, I took awareness that my right to life was being decided for me.”
A life on a fixed-term contract
Fate will decide otherwise. Separated from her partner, she experienced a complicated post-cancer period: “I had not worked on accepting the illness, I had check-ups every six months, my life was on a fixed-term contract”.
Her psychologist – more present than ever – helps her to pull herself together and work on her desire for motherhood. Then a new man burst into her life, he is a nurse.
Coincidentally, he also has difficulty procreating.
But four months later, when they were not expecting it – but very much hoping for it – it was a surprise. Laetitia becomes pregnant. In November 2018, the couple welcomed little Charli (1): “He chose us, it’s our greatest gift. Illness no longer has a place in our house. Being a mother is the most beautiful role of my life” confides the one who insists on prevention:
“You must consult if you have the slightest doubt, and get a second opinion if necessary. Even if it’s scary, you can avoid making the disease worse. It doesn’t only happen at 50 or 60 years old.”
As for psychological follow-up, “you have to accept it and accept to cry too. I cried a lot.”
1. The first name has been changed
Numbers
According to the results of her DNA tests, nothing predisposed Laetitia to having breast cancer.
-Environ 10 % cases of breast cancer occur in women under the age of 35 years and almost 20 % avant 50 ans.
-Breast cancer most often develops around 60 ans.
Next to 50 % of breast cancers are diagnosed between 50 et 69 years and around 28 % are diagnosed following 69 ans.
Source: Institut National du Cancer
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