Cancer can be cured or died of it. This is what many people imagine. This is also what the journalist thought of Press Marie-Eve Morasse when she was diagnosed with melanoma at the age of 27. And that’s what she believed more than ever when, after 11 years in remission, the cancer resurfaced. Rather, this first relapse in 2018 threw her into that “middle space”, between healing and imminent death, which is rarely talked about, but which is becoming the norm as science progresses. Marie-Eve Morasse wanted to testify to what she saw in this gray area in a book that she wrote jointly with her doctor, Dr Ari Meguerditchian, who describes the other version of the same story, that of the specialist who tries to eradicate cancer with all the hopes that science offers.
The book’s title, The recidivist, sets the scene for the story from the outset, which begins with the agonizing and interminable wait which will culminate in the confirmation that the bulge that Marie-Eve discovered by chance in the groin is indeed a metastasis. Waiting during which she plunges back into the disaster scenario that she had anticipated 11 years earlier. And this time, according to his script, the future looks even darker. Is this metastasis the tip of the iceberg? Will she see her daughter finish primary school?
A first meeting with the Dr Ari Meguerditchian, an oncological surgeon at the McGill University Health Center, gives him the first relief, because finally someone will take care of his cancer. The Dr Meg (for friends) knows how crucial this first date is. “The bond of trust is what is most important in the interaction between the patient and his doctor. It’s a bond powerful enough that you are able to turn your life over to a complete stranger after five to seven minutes of contact. This confidence is accompanied by the transfer of an enormous responsibility, which we take very seriously, ”he confides in an interview.
After a series of tests of all kinds, Marie-Eve’s case finally appears more complex to resolve than expected. Together with his colleagues, Dr Meg relies first on systemic therapy rather than excision of the metastasis. Then, following the disappearance of the other suspicious traces of cancer, the Dr Meg performs the surgery. However, this intervention revealed a clear divergence between the enthusiasm of the doctor who succeeded in eradicating the metastasis and the suffering of Marie-Eve who feels more than ever the “painful incarnation of cancer” in her body.
Despite all the compassion and attention that the doctor gives to his patient, a gap persists between his perception of the cancer he is trying to eradicate and that of the patient who undergoes the procedures. Very happy to announce to Marie-Eve that she no longer has cancer, the Dr Meg runs into a patient who does not jump to his neck as he expected. “It is true that I was disappointed, but above all I was disappointed to have had expectations about your reaction,” he writes. Perhaps I had forgotten that it was you who had suffered the disease, the treatments, the uncertainty. My reaction centered on my experience with cancer. Cancer is two parallel solitudes, that of the patient, but also that of the doctor. »The Dr Meg admits that she learned a lot about the patient’s perspective and how to do it while writing this book.
“Nothing and nobody could have prepared me for the weeks which followed the surgery, for the consequences of this attack on my body, which I nevertheless knew necessary and inevitable”, notes for her part Marie-Eve while relating the words of the Dr Philip Gordon, a surgeon at the Jewish General Hospital for 42 years, who confessed to Press to have truly realized what his patients were going through when he himself had metastasized cancer and had several chemotherapy treatments.
Marie-Eve and the Dr Meg thus unveil their vulnerability and their questions with a frankness and a deeply moving lucidity, which will touch the readers, whoever they are.
After having gone through systemic therapy, surgery, a one-year remission, then a new recurrence which is currently being treated successfully with immunotherapy, Marie-Eve is still evolving in this in-between punctuated by scans every three months. “I have metastatic cancer, but I’m not sick, I’m in good shape. […] I realize more than before how precious everyday life is. Just being alive, spending time with those I love, having days, weeks, months more, that’s already a lot. […] Cancer has erased all traces of nostalgia. What matters to me is to look ahead “, says Marie-Eve, who herself is astonished that” happiness and the pleasure of being alive also coexist intimately with pain and fear “.
Marie-Eve says she has metastatic cancer and, at the same time, the doctors say that the immunotherapy removed all traces of cancer in her body. What is it exactly? “We have succeeded in eradicating the cancer following its two recurrences. Marie-Eve does not currently have cancer anymore. The traditional definition of “metastatic” is no longer correct. As science advances, you start to see cancer more as an increasingly treatable disease, or at least a chronic disease that is manageable. This is the message of the book, which shows that we have gone from a world that is either black or white to all shades of gray. Cancer on a daily basis is the management of these gray areas while pursuing his profession, while raising his child ”, explains Dr Meg.
“Marie-Eve has evolved towards sound management of all gray areas. She has learned to live with this uncertainty, ”he points out. The proof: at the very end of the book, she tells how much it pleases her when she noticed that her boyfriend had inadvertently stored her daughter’s t-shirts in his own dresser or one of his pants in his daughter’s. “It’s just one sign that my daughter is growing up and that I’m still here to see it,” she says.