alone on stage, an actor with incurable cancer recounts his illness with humor

Dominique Vovk is alone on stage with his illness, ” the thing“as he calls it. This” thing” is pancreatic cancer, diagnosed two years ago. In April 2021, everything changes for him. “ I received a big blow at the announcement of the disease” he testifies. In France, cancer is the leading cause of death in men and the second in women. With humor, he has fun and breaks the taboos on the disease, on the stage of the Darius Milhaud theater in Paris “ I did like everyone else, I went on the internet, to find out more and I saw that the life expectancy is five years.

Since the announcement of his illness, the life of this actor, humanitarian, musician and jack-of-all-trades has been turned upside down. For a year and a half, he discovers waiting rooms and doctors. He goes through treatments and chemotherapy, going through a heavy operation to remove the tumor. ” I really suffered from these treatments. I didn’t feel like I was living much anymore. I spent very complicated and very difficult days sometimes, very often not being able to go outside“.

Despite this, the cancer recurred. Dominique Vovk, who knows he is convicted, then decides to stop the treatments. “Far be it from me to say that you shouldn’t do chemotherapy. You have to do what needs to be done in first intention, in second intention. I respected the doctors and what they gave me. proposed, it was because I had a recurrence that I decided to stop this chemo which could have actually allowed me to gain a few weeks or a few months.

“I preferred to improve my quality of life and tell myself that whatever I can take, whatever I can still live in a better state, I will try to live it.”

Dominique Vovk

at franceinfo

Today Dominique Vovk is in palliative care, based on painkillers and morphine. He is exhausted but combative. ” It’s a crucial choice that I made, but I feel lighter. I took a long term risk. Today I live with a Damocles sword, it’s really true for once, above my head because I don’t know what will happen, in a week, a fortnight, three weeks, a month . I don’t know what I have left to live for, or in what state. But what else can I do?”

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With biting irony on stage, he imagines the moment after his death: “I wonder if I will invite everyone to the ceremony, and what music will I choose?“The show allows him to dance, sing, make people laugh and sometimes cry, while raising awareness of the disease. ” I was approached in the street by spectators who said to me: ‘Thank you sir, you have put words to what we are going through!’ I think it’s a beautiful life project that I still have to live“.