a podcast “for families seeking to understand what their loved one is going through”

When Clémentine Vergnaud, a young journalist at franceinfo, learns that she has cancer, she decides to relate her fight in a podcast to, she said, leave a trace. A poignant testimony that her colleague and husband, Grégoire Lecalot, returns to.

On December 23, 2023, Clémentine Vergnaud, a journalist at franceinfo, died at the age of 31 from bile duct cancer. Detected a year and a half earlier, this cancer was particularly lethal and fulminating. She wanted to document her daily life in the face of the disease, her hopes and her doubts in a podcast entitled “My life facing cancer” to, she said, leave a trace. “If I could help at least one person with this podcast, I’m a thousand times happy.she explained, because when you’re sick, you go through a lot and that gave me a lot of power over all that.”

A few weeks after Clémentine’s death, the last six episodes of her podcast were put online posthumously, in accordance with her wishes. Today, it is her husband Grégoire Lecalot, married in his hospital room, who speaks for her. He appears in the 13th episode of the podcast. He is the companion and coach, who describes himself as “the one who fought until the last cartridge” so that the unacceptable does not happen.

The hundreds of messages he received, eight months after Clémentine’s death, show the impact the podcast had and still has on patients, their loved ones and caregivers. “There are more than two of us million listens, which was not a given, given the subject matter”says Gregory. When the first episodes were published online, it immediately took off very strongly, he remembers. While hospitalized in Nantes, Clémentine was surprised by the number of comments and listens. A broadcast by “word of mouth, especially in families of people who are affected by illnesses such as cancer, who are trying to understand what their loved one is going through”explains Grégoire, which also gives them the means to “talk about it between them afterwards”.

A fund created in memory of Clémentine and in her name will finance medical theses dedicated to cholangiocarcinoma, cancer of the biliary tract, including “The incidence is increasing, without anyone fully understanding why”reports the journalist.

The book taken from Clémentine Vergnaud’s podcast, My life facing cancer, is titled Clementine’s Diary and will be released in early October by Éditions du Seuil.