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. Clémentine describes her new treatment and the changes it has brought about.
Even if chemotherapy and immunotherapy work just about, the treatment must stop because it leads to inflammation of the liver. “I don’t see it very well, but I’m told right away that we’re going to put something else in place”, says Clementine. In the eyes of caregivers, this new treatment seems very promising. “I am told that we will switch to oral chemotherapy which we have been using since very recently and which can potentially work with my characteristics.”
>> All the episodes of My life facing cancer: Clémentine’s diary
Clementine smells like doctors “very confident” on this new treatment which will allow him to have a completely different quality of life. This chemotherapy is taken orally, that is to say tablets to be taken regularly in the morning and evening. “I no longer need to come to the day hospital for five hours, with a disgusting meal tray”, she jokes. Monthly follow-up appointments with a blood test and reassessments every three months with the scanner are added to his agenda. ” It changed my life!exclaims Clementine. I no longer have vomiting and nausea – although it took a long time to subside. I no longer have the mental fog that I had under chemotherapy.”
Exergue
“My concentration has improved. Before, I read ten pages maximum, and now I can read 40 pages at once. It’s a joy.”
Clementinein the podcast “My life facing cancer”
There are now more outings with friends or to go to museums. Another change, the mental load and the calendar even if Clémentine keeps her pill box: “It’s very pleasant, at 30, to go to the pharmacy to buy a pill box, like grandpas and grandmas, she quips. But there is a moment, when there are ten boxes of medicines lying on the table, where we have no choice.”
“The notice is so thick”
The alarms on his phone now punctuate his daily life. “I have to take my medication at a fixed time. I get up every morning at the same time, and every evening at the same time, I take the medication”explains Clémentine, who grabs the chemotherapy treatment box and pulls out a notice. “so thick” resembling a book. She unfolds the leaflet which “is one meter long double-sided”and starts reading the side effects: “If you start with the serious ones, you have the risk of bleeding, problems with the muscles. In the very frequent ones: reduced number of red blood cells, problems related to the nerve, headaches, dizziness, bleeding, blood pressure high, visual disturbances, stomach ache, diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea, constipation, itching, dry skin, hair loss – hey, I didn’t know about the hair -, skin rage, thickening of the superficial layers of the skin, joint pain , muscle aches, weakness or spasms, back pain, sore extremities, fever, swollen hands. I could go on like this for a long time because there are still ‘infrequent’ and ‘very frequent’ ones.”
“I’m in the middle of this therapy. For now, I don’t know if it’s working. I just know that it’s going well, that my body tolerates it well, that my life is much more pleasant under this treatment.”
Clementinein the podcast “My life facing cancer”
Clémentine has no certainty of the functioning of the treatment on the tumour. To find out, you have to go “to the famous scanner. C e dreaded moment or three weeks before I anguish.” An appointment noted in her diary but of which she never gives the date like that of the appointment with the oncologists to take stock of this scanner. “I don’t want to be asked how it went. If it is, I will have bad news and it will take me several days to digest it.