grimace soup

Clémentine Lecalot-Vergnaud was a journalist at franceinfo. She died on December 23, 2023 after battling cancer detected a year and a half earlier. She was 31 years old. On June 1, the podcast she cared about so much was released. First ten episodes where she recounted her fight against illness, her hopes and her doubts. For, she said, “leave a trace”. A few weeks before her death, from her hospital room, Clémentine wanted to resume the thread of her testimony. Here is the first of the last six chapters of “My life facing cancer: Clémentine’s diary”.

The day before the podcast launched, I had a huge freakout. I said to myself: but who is going to listen to an episode about cancer? People will never do that, it won’t interest them! They will find it too maudlin, they will say to themselves that I am making light of my illness. I was really, really scared. And the surge, on social networks in particular, amazed me! Literally, I couldn’t believe it. The people were extremely positive: patients who were happy that we were breaking the taboo a little, relatives of patients who were happy to know a little bit of what could be going on in the minds of their loved ones — because it is not not always easy. And this universality did me a lot of good. The fact that the press was also very interested in the podcast touched me enormously.

What came up a lot was that it was ultimately useful, all of that. And that was what I was looking for. There were hundreds of messages, hundreds of thousands of listeners. People who offered me crazy things: “I’m sending you a book”… “Do you want me to send you some chocolates“…There is a couple near Hyères, in the Var, who still lent us part of their house which they usually rent out! And that is just incredible to have all this momentum of solidarity.

It carries me through the whole month of June, it also continues a little at the beginning of July, I still receive a few other offers… There, I start to put the kibosh on it by saying that I need the summer vacation In my opinion. And then in mid-July, it starts to get a little more complicated, but it’s very insidious. I have digestive problems; I call the hospital, there are lots of doctors on vacation and I have the feeling that in the context of reduced staff numbers, digestive issues are not what excites them the most either… They do sorting, what. And so I’m stuck with these problems until the beginning of August. And at the beginning of August, we have a wedding. We’re going there. I try to pretend as much as I can, but we leave at midnight because I’m not very well. Then Sunday happens. And then, on Monday, horrible pain in the stomach, it’s no longer possible… So it’s back to the hospital. There, they start to tell me that they don’t really know what it is. And then at one point, they ask the opinion of the neighboring hospital with which they work, which says: we want to do a colonoscopy again, we need to see about it. And here comes the thing that I had not imagined at all, but which was well written on the patient sheets that we were given at the beginning: in fact, I have colitis, an inflammation of the colon, because of my targeted therapy. And then, when we tell you: well in fact, you won’t be able to continue it… Tumble. The grimace soup.

“September 18: the day I had to come back to work”

That happens at the end of August, beginning of September, roughly. This targeted therapy had given me back almost my entire life. I could come out more easily, I had almost no symptoms… Everything was fine. And suddenly, I’m told: we’re going to take away everything that gave you life, strength, a return to yourself… All that, we’re going to have to take it away. That’s a massive blow. I had a very difficult time mourning this targeted therapy which was life-saving for me.

I was told quite quickly that we had to stop this targeted therapy, that immunotherapy, we clearly saw that for me, it didn’t really work… So what’s left? Chemo. And then there…

I closed myself off for about two weeks, to the point where I couldn’t even respond to my family. It is only my partner that I am willing to speak to, because he is the only one to whom I can tell all this suffering. It really is (sob)… It remains an extremely painful memory. Especially when they scheduled the first session of this new chemo for September 18th. It was the day I had to come back to work. When you enter the hospital and you say to yourself: there, in fact, I should enter the Maison de la radio… It’s awful, really, it’s awful.

So we start this new chemo. Friday, everything is fine. Saturday is going pretty well, I’m not as tired as I would have imagined. And then on Sunday, it’s weird. When I wake up, I have cold sweats, freezing sweats. My partner joins me at the end of the day, I tell him that things aren’t going well, that I’m tired, that I don’t feel very well. The meal arrives, he says to me: “I’ll help you eat.” We straighten the bed and there, I feel my heart racing. It’s a huge gallop in the chest, it hits, it almost hurts. It feels like someone is sitting on my chest. Really, I’m not well, it’s not okay at all. So I ring the bell, they take the constants from me, they tell me: “Ah well, your pulse is at 110”. Well yes, but for me, he’s usually 65-70, so it’s not good. “Ah yes, but earlier it was at 100”. Well yes, so, second reason to say that things are not going well!

“You call me Samu right away!”

They end up calling the doctor… More like the impression that he is like a chicken in front of a knife… He ends up doing an electrocardiogram for me which must, a priori, already show things. He waits a bit, he does a second one, obviously, it always shows things. He tells me : “With what you took as chemo, sometimes there are coronary spasms.” I imagine coronary contractions. “It can happen, it’s transitory.” And he’s not going to let go of this transitional word all night long, whereas I’m only going to get worse, worse, worse during the night… The next morning, they tell me pretty quickly, around 8:30-9 hours : “We’ll take you down to the cardiology unit.” It’s a small box where there is a cardiologist who does routine exams. She starts the ultrasound of the heart and at one point she stops and says: “But why hasn’t this lady been in intensive care since last night? Call me for emergency services right away!” On the one hand, I am relieved: finally, someone is listening to me. But on the other hand, Samu, all that… It’s not very reassuring.

We go back up, there is the head of department waiting for me with the psychologist, with the intern, with the nurse. And they start trying to reassure me, because I’m not feeling well, I’m in tears. What’s going on ? “Don’t worry too much, you’re having a cardiac reaction to the chemo. A priori, it shouldn’t be too bad. From what I see, it might be takotsubo*.” She says it like this, I know the word from afar because I have a friend who experienced one. But hey… He’s not betting on that either. So I retain it, but nothing more. On this fact, very quickly, the Samu arrives. And screaming sirens all the way to Henri-Mondor. There, I feel that it is not good.

Takotsubo: Takotsubo syndrome, or broken heart syndrome, is a cardiomyopathy that often begins after emotional stress or severe pain. The symptoms are generally the same as those of a heart attack. To be continued :

heart racing.