The narrative technique of “I” is obviously quite rare in the reporting profession, which seeks to tell the world and others while observing from a distance, and without putting themselves on stage. Bruno Cadène, a senior reporter at Radio France, did just the opposite. He who always hides behind his subjects has decided to talk about him and the stroke that struck him five years ago.
On February 6, 2017, Bruno Cadène feels good, it’s a good day. He is making good progress on the preparations for a report in Bulgaria and Romania. A former correspondent for Radio France in Moscow, a senior reporter for France Culture and then for the international editorial staff of Radio France, he had no idea that from one minute to the next, that evening, he was going to find himself nailed to the ground. , half-paralyzed, victim of a cerebral vascular accident and a cerebral hemorrhage, an even more serious form. Statistics suggest a one in two chance of surviving in these conditions.
The head doctor of the Paris fire brigade Stéphane Dubourdieu specifies: “You were taken care of by a first aid team. They are trained in detecting the signs of a stroke. It is an emergency. It is estimated that for every minute lost, 1.9 million neurons are destroyed. So you see that the more time you save, the less the risk of sequelae is important.”
And all this, he specifies at the microphone of Bruno Cadène, who found the chief doctor for the purposes of this very beautiful report broadcast on France Culture.
And consequences, Bruno has. Part of the body paralyzed, and the use of speech almost lost. But all his head, his conscience, his lucidity, his intelligence, his humor and his steely mind are still there. The radio is one of the great passions of his life, and no longer speaking, and a fortiori no longer speaking into a microphone is not an option. He set himself this objective and five years later, here he is on the air.
Of course, for us colleagues, who know Bruno’s voice and delivery, hearing this drawling tone touches us at the first words, and then we become familiar, caught up in the force that emanates from it. With his speech therapist, and his physiotherapists, he is in constant progress, and it is not over. In short deadlines, the probability that the result obtained will be close to what his voice was before February 6, 2017 is strong. There is in this report a controlled emotion but that one guesses.
In this long-awaited return behind a microphone, and even in this profession reporter, we feel Bruno’s joy in talking to us about all this. Just talk to us. He who since the accident had been forced into radio silence. Finding a post at Radio France after a year of sick leave, but without words, connected to writing on digital, authors of fascinating articles and web files signed by this great connoisseur of Central Europe on the site of French Culture. At the end of the third year, he started writing a comic strip to tell 36 months of radio silence.
And today is 5 years. And he speaks on the air, we can never rejoice enough. But the substance was not so simple, because the use of the “I”, talking about oneself, about one’s illness, interviewing one’s wife, one’s director, one’s doctors, is not common, beyond the current , it is contrary to all the principles of the reporting profession.
But very quickly, Bruno unburdens himself of this burden, and the listener does not have the impression of hearing a journalist spreading his life. There is so much humility, generosity, and strength, that one does not think of a narcissistic form. And above all what Bruno Cadène had not measured was the echo that his report would cause among all stroke victims.
40% survive without sequelae, 10% die. Between the two, there is life with a more or less visible disability, more or less compatible with life in society. And Bruno’s report proves to be a tremendous message of hope for those who are discouraged in the face of adversity.
Implicitly, what Bruno says is that nothing is ever irretrievably lost. We need to believe. The reporting profession is proud to have within it a man of this caliber. And tomorrow is his birthday.