By Jeanne Vinteuil
Jeanne lost her mother when she was 25, and her aunt also had breast cancer. When Jeanne was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), her children were still very young. In her blog, www.triplenegatif.blogspot.com, Jeanne returns to the multiple aspects of the breast: that of the woman, the mother, the sick person, then the reconstructed breast. Heredity and lineage, but also faith, are questioned in a lyrical, almost poetic and soul-searching way.
The first excerpt recalls the period of announcing her disease, while the other reflects on her comparison with her mother, who had died of bilateral breast cancer and her decision to request a mastectomy followed by a prophylactic mastectomy on the other side.
Chapter 8: Floating
Then followed a period of uncertainty.
Like riding on a flying carpet, I had left solid ground. Unbalanced, I was hovering in the air: my perception of the size and importance of the events varied, like I was drifting on the wind.
Disoriented atop my flying carpet, I felt a bit nauseous.
I watched everyone else walking confidently below, assured of their place on the firm ground. They could continue playing while I felt like I was stopped by a red light from a hand of Mille Bornes (a card-based racing game). It held me immobilized, frozen: “You, you’re no longer a player in this game”.
Like having the thief positioned on my territory in the board game Settlers of Catan, I was stuck. In despair. The other players continued their progression, but I was eliminated.
I played these games with my children, to “win” a little more time to be able to play with them as long as possible. However, now the stakes were life. These breakdowns, these red lights, these flat tires became tangible and terrifying.
How many people next to us on public transit or in checkout lines are riding their own flying carpets? Who are in chemotherapy in this waiting room or this cinema, unseen, unknown? Who feel, perhaps much like me, in the pit of their stomach the terrible anxiety of the end of the game?
The unspeakable impression of the end; today, I forgot about it and, like the others who I see going about their lives, I would no longer be able to feel what I felt even if I tried to force it: the fear, the anguish.
But I sometimes wondered if I was exaggerating and making things seem worse than they were.
Charting a Different Course
[After my diagnosis] taking a tangent became my plan. I tried to retrace my mother’s diagnosis in order to deviate from it and set sail.
While going to sleep, my little Marcel fascinated by the shadows cast by fairytale characters, I turned over and over in my head dates and events. A family vacation where she was exhausted and couldn’t stomach anything except bland food; a Christmas Day where she looked emaciated, her arm swollen with lymphedema; her smiling at a friend in the hospital room. I tried to re-establish the chronology of her disease based on which diploma I’d received or which course I had failed, which happy or sad life event had occurred, or the birth of a nephew. I faithfully reconstructed each remission and recurrence, and the fatal spread of metastases to other organs.
On the other hand, I absolutely refused to consult her medical file. I left it in an envelope on my stairs, and gave it to my surgeon to read instead. "That has nothing to do with you," she told me, much to my delight. However, since then, I've read it through and wondered if my case wasn't actually more serious...
Maybe I’m just scaring myself.
So, desperate times call for desperate measures; let's chart a different course. Let's cut to the chase.
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