It is up to the teams of Jean-Pierre Pernaut, the life after, a documentary broadcast on C8 on December 9, 2021, that Jean-Pierre Pernaut spoke about his illness for the first time. Lung cancer diagnosed last spring, after a premonitory dream of his wife Nathalie Marquay. As for his prostate cancer, which he defeated in 2018, the 71-year-old former presenter of the TF1 13H newscast spoke openly of the evil that is eating away at him.
“For years I have been told ‘quit smoking, quit smoking’. I smoked a lot. And then, I was discovered a little disease that happens to people who smoke. I found myself a little lung cancer. This is the first time that I speak of it “, first confided Jean-Pierre Pernaut. He specified that in March-April, he had been given a CT scan, because he had “bronchitis that did not pass “. He then did a PET scan and the diagnosis was made: cancer of the right lung. A cancer tougher than that of the prostate that he managed to conquer.
This lung cancer scares him but, fortunately, he can count on the unwavering support of his wife Nathalie Marquay and his children Lou (soon 19) and Tom (18). According to a first hospital, it was impossible to operate on Jean-Pierre Pernaut. But on the advice of his wife, he sought a second medical opinion. The Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris agreed to proceed with the operation. There was, however, a non-negotiable condition: that of completely stopping smoking. And, to his surprise, the presenter managed to do without it without difficulty, after fifty years of smoking. “The day I quit, I didn’t notice it. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since July 5th. I did not put a patch. I don’t miss tobacco. I should have stopped much sooner if it’s that easy. It is a question of will. I was afraid of breathing badly, of coughing, of putting on weight. Well, I gained three kilos in three months. I promise I’ll go to the gym“, he remembered.
On July 5, Jean-Pierre Pernaut was therefore able to have the operation discreetly, under a false identity. A heavy intervention who filed “a little scared“to the main interested party. It actually lasted more than five hours and what the surgeon was going to do was chilling my spine. “We spread the ribs, we open the lungs, we take the lobe where there is the tumor, we analyze if it has protruded, if there are metastases...“, confided the father of the family. three days after he woke up, an interminable wait for Nathalie Marquay. “They said they had never seen anyone sleep so long. They couldn’t wake him up. Finally he was completely in the coltar. They still put him in intensive care compared to the stents he has in the heart, it was necessary to monitor“said Miss France 1987. Fortunately, the doctor who operated on her husband took the time to come to the hospital room to reassure her.
The operation was a success but, a month later, another tumor “fatter” was diagnosed with the other lung. She was 3.5 centimeters and this time, the operation was not possible. “It would be too heavy for my health, we cannot do a second operation. So we started radiotherapy. It lasted a few weeks and, at the beginning of 2022, we will see if it had an effect or not.“Said Jean-Pierre Pernaut. So let’s hope that he will receive good news after the end of the year holidays.