There is no good season to die. You say the word “cancer” and an aura of drama and injustice is added. Not to mention the martial language, the famous “combat”, the “battle”. Whereas it would rather be a question of loving even more.
And we must ignore these pseudo-magical phrases: “Nothing happens for nothing” (go tell that to the Gazans), “What is your body trying to tell you? », “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!” », “Have you tried to forgive? “.
I’m willing to be responsible for everything that happens to me, but holy morphine, be silent when our time comes or let the real philosophers speak.
There are few people with whom I can talk about death, one of my favorite subjects. I’ve been preparing for this for a long time. I come across as odd at best, and at worst as suffering from morbid fascination. Fortunately, there is the philosopher Jacques Dufresne, capable of taking it and, above all, who navigates deep waters, effortlessly, between spirituality and greatness of soul.
They stripped the skin from my soul. I felt it leave me, one pretty May, when someone had attacked my body with an IV. I was going to die cured. They called it drug poisoning. It’s a lie, indeed.
At present, the only real adventure that exists in industrialized countries is to be sick or to be afraid of dying…
People said worse than my decision to stop chemo treatments, ten years ago this month, after four weeks of 5FU. I wrote this text, which won me a Judith-Jasmin prize. I also wrote a book (I don’t know how to lay the egg, but I know when it’s rotten), which led to tons of testimonies for years, sad stories of patients who were looking for a buoy or an alternative integrative to a medicine which condemned them or left them more dead than alive.
I don’t regret either one. Especially not for allowing myself to explore outside the limits of conventional medicine. They even wished me to die, the renegade of the needle. And I hummed these words from Boris Vian:
“I don’t want to die
No sir no ma’am
Before having felt
The taste that torments me
The taste that is strongest
I don’t want to die
Before having tasted
The taste of death. »
Younger and younger
We have not finished seeing young people with cancer, warns a large study by BMJ Oncology in 2023. 80% more than in 1990 among those under 50. It’s not a vague impression, it’s huge! Princess Kate, Karl Fringant and Caroline, all in their forties.
On Monday, while preparing this column, I was reading a few books that helped me through the ordeal of the chemical death of the soul (a side effect of chemo) when I learned of the death of sociologist and writer Caroline Dawson. My heart sank. A mother can’t bring herself to do that; She’s a soul, my dermatologist told me when he told me I had melanoma at 41. My B was 18 months old.
Nine years later, the oncologist, faced with my hesitation regarding his chemo with 6% effectiveness: “You don’t want to see your son enter university, Ms. Blanchette? »
Well, give him the message that he’s not going to college and I’m still here. We must remain humble in the face of an illness that we do not yet understand.
We do not heal, we describe our graves. We work to map our death.
I learned several things from these treatments presented as inevitable. Firstly, I don’t value life enough to put up with all this. Secondly, I am not a believer, but I trust the beyond more than here below. Three, I brought my B into adulthood with love (cries). Worst of all, the notary is tired of seeing me. Everything else is bonus tiramisu spooned into the fridge door at midnight.
Life owes me nothing at all. I prepared my B for my next cancer and especially for what the media will say about it if I die of it soon: “Don’t worry, they’ll remind you that I gave up chemo in 2014. Don’t read anything, it’s is better. »
On the other hand, these are readings like the book by Johanne Ledoux (Heal without warprefaced by Dr Jean Latreille), that of Dr David Servan-Shreiber (We can say goodbye several times), that of the philosopher Christiane Singer, who died of cancer (Last fragments of a long journey), that of Kelly A. Turner, researcher in integrative oncology (Radical remission), that of radiation oncologist Christian Boukaram (The anti-cancer power of emotions) and so many others who supported me.
None of these authors ignores the importance of the interior life in this journey of introspection and great solitude. The lexicon of going to war has no place for these apostles of peace.
On the other side of the worst
I managed to listen to the first two episodes of the podcast Duty The curedwith the DD Brigitte Rouleau who talks about her post-cancer, two years of great fatigue – same thing for me –, stations of the cross, black hole. Her treatments for breast cancer left scars on her way of being, of loving, of dreaming. Doctors who become patients have to overcome the limits of their science in these convalescences without instructions. Nothing prepares us for this. My scars are still sensitive after ten years. And I consider myself on eternal reprieve.
I found this card from Monique L., a cancer survivor reader who wrote to me, in 2014, this quote from the poet Emily Dickinson:
“Could live-lived
Could die-died
Could smile especially.”
That suits me perfectly.
The important thing is to stay alive in a heart other than ours
I reread this sentence from Christiane Singer: “on the other side of the worst, Love awaits you”. His entire final story is nothing but a thundering appeal to infinite Love.
“That my turn comes early is sad, but it does not constitute a monstrous injustice,” writes Dr.r Servan-Schreiber before he also died of cancer at the age of 50, after having created an integrative medicine center in the United States where classic and complementary approaches were offered. Like many, the psychiatrist was struck by a state of grace: “I also felt a kind of spiritual birth. »
Sometimes you have to agree to come across as enlightened in order to move towards yourself. But one thing is certain: dying can be learned. One day at a time.
Instagram: josee.blanchette