“My life facing cancer”

The mediator of the Radio France antennas, Emmanuelle Daviet receives the editor-in-chief of franceinfo, Samuel Aslanoff, for the production of the podcast “My life facing cancer” which he created with our colleague Clémentine Vergnaud, who died on December 23. Many listeners were moved by this testimony, particularly people suffering from cancer.

Many listeners of franceinfo, but also of other Radio France branches, wrote to us following the death of Clémentine Vergnaud, journalist at franceinfo, who died on December 23 of cancer at the age of 31. She had testified about her illness in her podcast My life facing cancer directed by Samuel Aslanoff.

Emmanuelle Daviet: Some listeners want to know how the idea for this podcast was born, Samuel?

Samuel Aslanoff : In fact, I knew Clémentine, who is a colleague. I knew she was sick. We had the opportunity to chat sometimes, but not much. And then one evening, I said to myself: but in fact, we have a journalist who is facing cancer. There are 400,000 new cases of cancer per year, so a lot of people face it.

But here, we have a journalist from Franceinfo who is on the front line, let’s say, maybe she might be interested in testifying, and ultimately also in doing her work. I went to see her, I just told her that actually, and she said to me: “yes, I’m interested in testifying. Besides, I started writing down some ideas about my illness, about what I’m going through, I’ll send them to you if you want.”. And when she sent me what she had started to write, I said to myself: this is going to be very interesting.

Listeners listened to this podcast, and very quickly, we received messages in which they said they were overwhelmed by the maturity, the force of the words. And then, through these messages that we can read on the mediator’s website, we discover the repercussions of this podcast in their lives?

So a lot of testimonies that Clémentine received when the podcast was broadcast, a lot of testimonies also that we received at franceinfo, that we were able to see on social networks, at the time of Clémentine’s disappearance, on December 23 , basically said the same thing: “Me, I’m sick, and what you said Clémentine, it’s exactly what I thought, what I was going through.”And then there are other people.”I’m not sick, but I accompanied someone who was sick. I accompanied my dad who died of cancer and it allowed me to understand, to better understand what the person is going through.. That was the objective of this testimony.

It was Clementine’s objective to remove the filter that there is, when illness strikes someone, there is immediately a sort of filter around that person, and everyone is a little embarrassed . We don’t really know how to talk to him. Should we talk to him about the illness? Should we distract her? We don’t really know how to do it. And Clémentine, who wanted to try to make people understand what the patients were going through, has, I think, succeeded in this challenge, in any case to explain better, to try to lift this veil which is always a little embarrassing.

And how do you explain that we have also received a lot of messages from nursing staff, whether doctors or nurses?

There are quite a few doctors, in fact, who listened to Clementine’s testimony, including doctors who treated Clementine, and they learned things about the way in which, once again, patients feel everything that happens to them. , how they feel about the way they are taught about the illness, feel about the way they receive care, on a day to day basis. For example, she explains to me how she understood at a certain point that the disease was too strong, and the doctors told her the same thing. They told him: indeed, we are going to stop the treatments. And that moment, ultimately, for her, it was like a relief.

Here is an extract from Clémentine Vergnaud’s testimony, on this precise moment. “When you are there, in your head, there is a moment when you feel guilty, and you say to yourself, it’s me who is giving up, it’s me who no longer has this strength, and who lack of courage in the end. It’s very guilt-inducing because we say to ourselves: I’m giving up but, but, why don’t I actually hold on? And to hear that even in the voice of the doctors, it would be a mistake to “Hanging on at that point did me a lot of good, because I finally had the right to say stop. I finally had the right to let go.”

Samuel Aslanoff: “I finally had the right to say stop.” It was like a relief. Well, there is only one person who is going through this, who is on the front line, who can tell the story. And Clementine, moreover, told it very well.

Emmanuelle Daviet: So we have just listened to an extract from the rest of Clémentine Vergnaud’s testimony. And specifically, listeners were asking if there was a sequel to the podcast since she had mentioned it?

Yes, there will be a sequel coming out Tuesday, January 16, in three days, because it continued to go through some interesting things. We just mentioned it when she learned that she would not win against the disease. She also talks about the end of life. How can you reassure someone who knows they are going to die? It’s not a universal message, because everyone will have their own response, but her response is very simple, it is to be surrounded by loved ones, surrounded by her parents and her partner, her husband. Here too, she talks very well about what relieves her, and maybe that can help someone who will one day be in the same situation.