It is an intimate and powerful testimony. In the podcast Ma vie face au cancer, journalist Clémentine Vergnaud recounts, in ten episodes, the life of a 29-year-old young woman and the outbreak of the disease. A rare and very aggressive bile duct cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, diagnosed a year ago. “It’s the lottery of chance, it’s absurd, and I’m forced to accept it. “Between hopes, support of relatives, treatments and relationship to death, Clémentine Vergnaud delivers a sensitive and salutary story. For Le Point, she looks back on the past year and tells about an approach that she wants “useful to all”.

Le Point: Why did you want to testify about your cancer?

Clémentine Vergnaud: I first testified to be useful, and to try to allow those who would listen to me to better tame this disease. Because this podcast is intended to speak to everyone: to patients (who may feel alone in the ordeal), to their loved ones and caregivers (who do not always understand what is going on in the heads of the first), but also to everyone. Almost all of us know, today, in our entourage a person with cancer (a relative, a colleague, etc.). This disease is spreading and becoming a major issue. I am well aware that going to this subject, still taboo, requires an effort, but it is important to talk about it, to make it visible. I have also received hundreds of messages since the broadcast of my testimony. Some confide in me that they feel “understood”, others forward it to relatives…

I also testified for myself. And my approach is quite primitive, almost animal: I needed to leave a mark. I’m 30 years old, my professional career is just starting, I have no children… If I’m going to die in three months, what will people say when people talk about me? Certainly, my relatives will be able to tell who I was. But, for others, I didn’t want to leave without leaving a legacy.

Your podcast starts with this day of June 15, 2022, during which you understand that “there is something wrong”…

It’s very hot, I’m wearing a light dress and I’m about to have a scan for what I believe to be gallstones. If the exams seem long enough to me, the wait is even longer. I realize that in the waiting room patients who come after me are called before me. And I hate to hear the radiologist give them their report, the door wide open. I then find that it is a scandalous violation of medical secrecy. However, when they call me, they close the door behind me. And I have a rush of adrenaline, I understand that there is something wrong.

The doctor tells me that I have a liver mass of 6 x 4 cm and that I will have to do additional tests. There’s an urgency to his voice and he tells me he doesn’t want “there to be any downfalls.” I take a punch. “Loss of luck” is for people who will pass! I ask him if it could be cancer, he confirms it, and then everything falls apart. I go out haggard, in a trance. I feel alone in the world, I am separated, my parents are 400 km away. I put the report on a yellow recycling bin and call my mother, a nurse, who replies, “Look, at this age, I’ve never seen cancers. »

How do you feel about this announcement when you’re 29?

We cannot imagine it. Especially since at that time I was fine, exercise, eat organic, don’t smoke… It’s the lottery of chance, it’s absurd, and I’m forced to accept it. Still, I feel a great sense of injustice, and ask myself “why me?” “. As I recount in the episode “I’m not like those little girls anymore”, I watch on Instagram my friends go on vacation to idyllic places while I’m hooked up to my chemo pumps, getting pregnant when I can’t. a priori never have a baby, and see colleagues seize the professional opportunities that I aspired to… Cancer patients are not angelic [she laughs], they feel the same feelings as everyone else and, at that moment, I am jealous.

You mention in your podcast how the disease changes the relationship with others, and list in particular their clumsiness… Are there things not to say to a sick person?

It’s very simple, but I think it’s enough to tell the other that we are there, that we love them and that, if they need something, then they can call us. According to the messages I receive, it was important to say it. Someone wrote to me, “Thanks to you, I knew what to say to this friend I was having dinner with and seeing for the first time since her cancer news. »

In my case, I have been told a lot “you are a fighter”, “you will get through this”… I find these injunctions to force terrible. When I was told “don’t give up, fight,” I wanted to say, “Take my place, we’ll talk about it!” I know these words are kind, but others, who see themselves in you as a mirror, tend to mirror their own fears back at you. And, little by little, I started to respond that I was not a “warrior”, that I was just doing “whatever I could”. I also announced that no, I was not curable, and that was a form of deliverance.

You talk about “going on” for eight months without researching your cancer prognosis, then one night you go online. What has this information changed for you?

It’s a winter Sunday night. I have dinner with my spouse and, at the end of the meal, I feel so bad that I end up on the floor. I decide to go to bed but continue to squirm. The period is difficult, I chain complications and hospitalizations. Psychologically, I feel a huge fed up and I come to wonder what’s the use of suffering. Am I doing all this for nothing? I need to know. From the few elements shared by the oncologists and the over-solicitation of my parents and my spouse, I understood that it was not “little cancer”. But how much? So I’m doing my research: 7-10% five-year survival when you’re operable, and I’m not. But it was important for me to know that and to go through this stage. I needed to know how close death and I were to face it better. It also allowed me to raise the issue with my oncologists, who I somehow forced to answer me when they had so far been dodging…

You devote an episode to the heaviness of the administrative work which is added to the illness, more specifically to your problems with social security. Tell us…

Since the beginning of the illness, a “bug” on their site has prevented me from automatically receiving the daily allowances to which I am entitled. I have to log in every fortnight to claim them and it takes two weeks or more to settle. It’s such a mental load that I reported it by email and was even received by the CPAM. I was told there was nothing we could do, I cried!

However, a few days after the broadcast of my podcast, the President and CEO of Radio France picked up her phone herself and, this Thursday evening, I received an email indicating that an investigation was to be carried out, that the “bug” was going to be solved and it actually affected hundreds of other people. I’m almost a whistleblower [laughs]. I had a microphone and was able to give them “bad publicity”, but when I think of all those who have seen each other in silence, it’s heartbreaking. Because the administrative galleys are a second violence when you are sick.

Where are you today?

After months of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, I am now treated with targeted therapy, and this is an opportunity for me: my life is almost normal, I have few side effects, I can envisage a return to work and I find simple pleasures like going to a party. We also see the disease shrinking a bit, it’s a possibility that we couldn’t even consider since we only thought we could stop it. Maybe it will allow me to be stabilized long enough for research to uncover something groundbreaking that can save me. It’s the optics with patients who, like me, cannot be cured.

As for my professional projects, I can confirm that a second season of my podcast is in the pipeline. It’s a lot of pressure when I see the number of testimonials I received for the premiere!

“My life facing cancer: Clémentine’s diary”, by Samuel Aslanoff and Clémentine Vergnaud, on France Info.