Clémentine is 30 years old and is a journalist at franceinfo. In June 2022, he was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and very aggressive digestive cancer. She recounts her battle with the disease, her hopes and her doubts. The first period of treatment was particularly difficult for her.
Surgeons cannot operate Clémentine to remove her tumor. Indeed, the cancer has spread to several places in his body: a lymph node in the liver, the left hip, under the lungs. The first treatment she receives therefore combines two processes: chemotherapy (destruction of cancer cells using certain molecules) and immunotherapy (stimulation of the immune system to attack diseased cells) “I don’t understand it at the time, but it’s something very heavy.”
Before getting there, you still have to go through the operating room. “We start with the placement of an implantable chamber”, she recalls. This consists of slipping a small box under the skin, at chest level. This is connected to a large vein by a small tube, a catheter. “The objective is to pass the products through a large vein because chemotherapy tends to damage them. If we used the veins of the wrist, as for infusions in the hospital, they would quickly become unusable.”
Nausea, fatigue, vomiting
Clémentine continues after the operating room with the first treatment session. His daily life will be the same for four months: a three-week cycle, first with a session that combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy, a second session a week later with only chemotherapy, then a break the following week. Concretely, she is in the hospital for about five hours two out of three Wednesdays. And will even have to go the day after his 30th birthday.
“The feeling that I finally keep is something very heavy”she confides with hindsight. “I have almost no respite. Finally, it’s a kind of fog that follows for four months: it comes back all the time.” The side effects are also very striking: “Nausea, fatigue, vomiting, loss of memory and concentration, lists the journalist. It’s really, it’s extremely heavy.” However, at the time, she does not realize it.
“We got into it, we tell ourselves that it’s pretty much going compared to the other patients we meet in the corridors.”
After four months, Clémentine’s body is racing because of the immunotherapy: she has hepatitis, one of the risks of the treatment. Oncologists are forced to stop the protocol, especially since it does not completely stop the development of metastases located near the right lung. She saw it as “a failure. I was presented with immunotherapy as a somewhat innovative treatment, which was not offered two months ago. My body is rejecting this chance.” But doctors have something else to offer him: targeted therapy.