Video. In Angoulême, games of pétanque to better support prostate cancer

They are caregivers, they are behind the operation and they are a little ahead of schedule. Émeline Ménard and Élizabeth Teulade are technicians in the radiotherapy department at Girac. They chose to launch Movember ahead of time, this month of November which encourages men to grow a moustache to raise awareness about prostate cancer screening, based on the model of Pink October, dedicated to breast cancer. “We thought about it. We said to ourselves, why not the prostate? It still represents 30% of our radiotherapy patients.” And it became Moustache pétanque…

“It’s good that the “oldies” can share their experience”

Another form of therapy, through exchange, sharing experiences. That reassures Jean-Christophe Voiron a little. “I was screened a year and a half ago, operated on in October 2023.” Now, he’s off for a cocktail of hormone therapy and radiation. Confident. He talks about his cancer, naturally, without taboo. “The balls are a pretext. That’s what also allows for contacts outside the hospital. Here, we talk about what we want, about each other’s problems. We see the caregivers in a different context, they have more time.”

Provoke the meeting. A good dozen patients, a few more caregivers. “We know that patients can have problems with treatments, that they don’t always talk about it. This is a way to talk more easily, to find solutions,” explains Élizabeth. “It’s good that they meet, that the “old ones” can share their experience,” adds Émeline. “It also allows them to get over the illness.” And to resume physical activity.

“Balls are secondary”

Cedric Revelen, the operational director of the Girac radiotherapy center, quickly realized the interest of the thing. “We see the patients for two months, every day. It creates bonds. But,” he says, “men have more difficulty uniting with each other, talking about it, unlike women who are more comfortable in the associative environment.” Unless you provoke the meeting. Joël Duhamel, a young retiree aged 63, has just undergone “forty radiotherapies. I’m waiting for the results in three months.” So, he came “for the cohesion, the information. The balls, that’s secondary.”

Dr. Mokrane Benhaddou is a radiation oncologist. He confirms: “It’s information and prevention.” And patients ask questions. Like Bernard, 74, who wonders why his Bordeaux oncologist, who had been treating him for years for blood cancer, didn’t have him screened before he was 74. He had “no symptoms. If the doctor hadn’t asked for a PSA… I would have been in the last stage of an aggressive cancer.” 39 radiation sessions and three years of hormone therapy. Which also raises questions.

“The PSA level, for prostate specific antigen in French,” explains Dr. Philippe Lefèbvre, a radiation oncologist, “is what alerts us. For the most advanced cases, we use hormone therapy. It’s a treatment,” the doctor explains, “that stops the production of testosterone that fuels the cancer.” A sort of “castration,” Dr. Benhaddou translates. “Sometimes, they don’t dare talk about it.” He knows that, often, “what worries them is erectile dysfunction. It’s due to the hormone therapy but, in one case out of two, also to the radiation therapy.” He reassures: “There are treatments.” Bernard appreciates. “There’s a dietician, a sexologist, associations. That allows us to know a little more.”

“And then there are questions that are more easily addressed under the trees,” says Jean-Christophe Voiron. “And then we talk to each other, about what we had, how it went,” adds Jean-Luc Martin. “Trust. Don’t worry.”

The pétanque tournament last week was a first, but probably not the last. Élizabeth Teulade and Émeline Ménard have already reassured themselves. “We see smiles,” relaxed patients. They insist. Paradoxically, “radiotherapy is a department where we laugh a lot.”

300 prostates per year in radiotherapy

Prostate is the most common cancer in men. In Girac, in 2023, 301 patients who were affected by it were treated by radiotherapy at CeRAC, the Angoulême Charente Radiotherapy Center, set up on 1^er January 2022, the result of public/private cooperation between the Angoulême Hospital Center, the Soyaux Clinical Center and Radion, the group of liberal radiotherapists.
Every day, 120 patients are treated at the radiotherapy center. “A third for the prostate, a third for the breast, a third for the rest,” explains Dr. Benhaddou.
More than 50,000 new cases are detected each year in France and, although 8,000 deaths are recorded per year, figures from the National Cancer Institute, Public Health France and the ARC Foundation indicate a net survival rate of more than 90% at 5 years.
To raise awareness of the fight against this cancer, men are being asked to grow a moustache in November. This is the Movember operation, a contraction of November and mo, in slang, for moustache, organised in the wake of Pink October, an awareness campaign in the fight against breast cancer.