Cancer, a scary word, a disease that disrupts a course. Why Doctor has collected the testimonies of patients whose lives have changed after this ordeal. Today, the course of Guillaume Lamotte, reached at 35 years of a double cancer. From this experience, he made a book which he presents as “a story of hope”.
“Cancer, a gift of life”. Guillaume Lamotte put this sentence on the back cover of his book “Adieu cancers” written after the announcement of his remission in a double cancer testicle-lymphoma. “I recognize that it can hurt, but that’s really what I feel”, explains this young father who started a new journey after his illness.
For Guillaume, it all started when, at the age of 35, when he had just become a father, he was diagnosed with this double cancer. “It’s like a freight train that hits you in the chest, you have to be strong to take this kind of news, to learn something that can change your life forever”, he says, evoking his first reactions, the fear of dying, of not seeing her son grow up. But very quickly, he recovers. “I thought to myself, cancer doesn’t always equal death, hang on to that.”
A patient actor of his healing
And he hangs on, in his own way, no doubt guided by the ability to move forward that accompanies his life as an entrepreneur. His recipe, find out about his disease, go beyond the sometimes obscure words of doctors. “We have to ask questions, understand what we have and what we are going to do to us, we have to find out about the disease, that it no longer has any secrets in order to be able to face it better”. Guillaume Lamotte chooses to be what is called a “patient actor” of his illness, especially of his recovery. “Some patients become their cancer, they only live through their disease”, he observes.
He gets involved. And faces the test of treatments with philosophy. “The side effects, you have to accept them, it’s part of the game”. He experiments with fasting against nausea, he exercises to compensate for the loss of muscle tone. And he even dares some alternative practices, reflexology, energy treatments. “You don’t have to do just anything, but it can help, it’s important to strengthen your body and your mind at the same time, to try to better manage your emotions, to relax to eliminate the accumulated tensions”.
A book and a new activity
And then comes the day when the doctors pronounce for him “that word that every cancer patient expects”: remission. “We celebrated this victory all together, it’s a very important moment for everyone”, insists Guillaume Lamotte. But this victory, it does not end the story. “During this illness, I had found answers to questions I was asking myself about myself, I had things to share through a story of hope”. And he embarked on writing his book at the same time as he started a new coaching activity, to “help all the people who have been through an ordeal, who no longer feel in their place, who wish to take their life in hand”.
In fact, his illness opened his eyes to another way of existing. “Before, I was looking for recipes outside, like magic formulas … today I know how to listen to myself, manage my emotions, I realized that I had everything in me, that I was complete , I see life differently; this life can change at any time, I don’t want to regret anything anymore, I do things when I want to do them, I’m back to basics, to serve, to help to become better” .
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