“I didn’t even wash my right breast anymore, like it was a cactus, or it was radioactive“. Véronique recounts her first moments after discovering his breast cancer, February 14, 2018. A small ping pong ball lodged there, on the right side of his chest, accompanied by another lesion, only a few millimeters, but more invasive. All it takes is a palpation for the gynecologist to change her expression and send her manu militari do a mammogram, which turns into a biopsy.
The following March 8, Véronique was in the operating room to have her C cup removed, and met her oncologist and radiotherapist, Hortense Laharie, from Tivoli center in Bordeaux. Five years after their common medical adventure, the two women are reunited for a sporting adventure, this time. A female orientation trek in the desert between dunes and ocean, the Rose Trip Senegal, which raises funds for the fight against breast cancer, in partnership with the association Ruban Rose. The carer and the cared for, who run in the same team for this adventure, accompanied by Edith, a third runner, tell their common journey, from the hospital to the sandy track.
When illness comes into her life, Véronique is 48 years old, she is athletic, and has already completed several treks. If the idea of being “sick” does not really appeal to her, she quickly accepts the idea that she will have to put the pedal to the metal for a few months, the time of the treatment. The sooner we get on with it, the sooner it’ll be over, she told herself. “I went into action, reaction mode. Breast cancer is like a weed in your lawn. You know there are lots of roots so we don’t think: we remove it. Right away, I decided to trust the doctors 3,000%, I consider that we are a team, exactly like in a sporting adventure“, recalls the patient.
“The trek will be your course”
With Véronique sitting on the other side of her desk, the oncologist meets one of the 700 women who consult the center each year for the same reason, breast cancer. But this patient has something special, “an overflowing energy, she does not allow herself to be intimidated at all, she is absorbed neither by grief nor by revolt… She is immediately combative, which is rare“, she notes. Barely infused with the first chemo, Véronique already has a question: she has planned a trek the following October, will she be able to go? “During the illness, it was her only anxiety: she wondered if she could walk again. I told him : no problem, this will be your course, your plan for life after illness, we will do everything so that you can go there“.
Every three weeks, during each round of chemotherapy, the two women see each other. The doctor has a “transversal” relationship with her patients, because she is convinced “that must be brought back to life in the oncology consultation“, testifies Dr. Hortense Laharie. They are roughly the same age, love sport, connect over the course of care which then goes on to 30 radiotherapy sessions. In parallel with the disease, Véronique goes through this phase “where all femininity is undermined: I lose my hair, my eyelashes, my breast, I lose weight a little, my nails fall out. I look at myself in the mirror and I say to myself: it’s not me“.
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But Véronique is not the type to let go, as evidenced by the oncologist. She stays on course, stays active, walks every day, and reached the October 2019 trek. A first victory, followed by the announcement of remission, and follow-up consultations which are slowly being spaced out. “One day she came into my office with an idea. She told me that she had taken a path she had not expected, that it was I who had pulled her along this adventure in illness. And she offered me to do the opposite: to take me on her own journey, a trek together“, says Hortense. The idea seduces her, “for once a patient offers me this, I can’t refuse“, she jokes. They begin to train, go from “you” to “you”, weave a friendship, until the very beginning of April 2023 which brings them together on the boiling sand of Lompoul , in Senegal.
“You saved my life, I’m sure I won’t leave you there”
The thermometer passes the 40 degree mark, the dunes give way to a landscape worthy of the Lion King, a savannah where only the acacias provide shade. We guess in the background the sound of the waves, because the Atlantic Ocean is only a few kilometers away. Besides, the walk will get us there by tonight. The air is saturated with humidity, like a hammam. The cardio increases under the pressure of the effort and the crushing heat, but there are still 15 kilometers to go. This time, on Véronique’s favorite playground, it’s Hortense who’s having trouble. “I can see myself as a doctor telling my patients who are suffering: hold on, it will be fine, courage. I only see them every three weeks, but they taste sickness every day. And I’m here, in the pain of this moment, guessing the effort, and telling myself that it’s not much besides“, observes the oncologist. The physical fatigue is such that she asks Edith and Véronique: “Hey girls, you’re not letting me die there, are you?“And Véronique to answer:”Ah well no, you saved my life, I will surely not leave you there!“
The sporting adventure reshuffles the cards, here their roles are reversed. It is Véronique who takes on the role of caregiver. In this moment of weakness, Hortense knows that she can count on her former patient, and becomes aware of the trust that her patients place in her, without knowing anything about her: “When you are sick, you have to ask yourself the question: can I really count on the doctor in front of me?“In this experience, as in the previous one, the two women have the same goal: to stay the course towards the end of the course, to trust each other, to look in exactly the same direction.
The Rose Trip trek is an orienteering race, a bad look in the compass is enough to lose sight of the track. “As in chemotherapy or radiotherapy, we aim for specific benchmarks“, observes Véronique. She remembers her journey as a patient and sees in this sporting experience which flirts with the limits, some similarities: “The body is put to the test, you are very careful about what you drink, what you eat to sustain your effort. And when the body wears out, you agree to give it a break, so you can stay on course to finish the race“. With the difference that “the disease imposes itself on you, while it is you who imposes the trek on you“. And that’here, she is rebuilding a stock of self-confidence, the very one that was stolen from her by cancer.
Three years after stopping treatment, Véronique is looking for a way out in this three-day journey. She’s here for”close the parenthesis that we opened together, with Hortense, on this cancer“, she says. As they cross the finish line, hand in hand, the oncologist has great news for his patient: “If there were to be a recurrence, it would have occurred within two years, and we spent them. Now you can turn the page, you’re cured“.
