The story of Maguelone Aribaud is one of a kind. Suffering from tongue cancer, she had an operation and place a piece of his forearm to replace what served as his tongue. “I think it’s a lovely story, it ends very well,” she says in “Focus Dimanche”, on RTL.
However, Maguelone Aribaud takes time to obtain the right diagnosis. “It was during an appointment with my dentist for a scaling that he looked at this tongue and said to me: “But these are not canker sores that you have at all”, she continues. She then understands that the treatment she has been following for several months is of no use.
Very quickly, the woman who published “Foreign Language”, a work on her history, was taken care of and met Professor Agnès Dupret Bories. The latter is used to technological prowess: it was already she who had recreated a patient's nose by modeling it in three dimensions. “I had no doubts at all,” assures Maguelone Aribaud.
“It’s just huge”
“I said to myself that it was great, that science will allow me to benefit from these technologies which are very simple: we take one part of my body and put it on another part of my body”, she explains simply. “It's just huge, incredible. We can't even imagine that a language can function again with a piece of its arm.”
Today, Maguelone Aribaud speaks very well, but has had to get used to living with her new language. “There are certain things she doesn't like : the acidity of dairy products, certain fruits, coffee”, she lists.
However, she refuses to deprive herself of certain foods, such as kiwis or grapefruit. “So I [sa langue] explains that it will sting, I talk to him all the time“, she reveals. For Maguelone Aribaud, it's her way of integrating her into her new life and thanking her, she concludes.
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