“For the daily life of the patient, there is no one,” Fabrice Rodenburger told AFP, exhausted by a year of “permanent fight” so that his father, suffering from dazzling lung cancer, was diagnosed and supported. , denouncing inequalities in care.
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“When Dad was in pain at home, vomiting and having trouble breathing, I called Samu from 8 p.m. In a year, I had to call 5 or 6 times for a doctor to come see him in the evening,” he recalls.
Collected by the League Against Cancer, his testimony will feed into a Manifesto which will alert at the beginning of 2025, about gaps in patient care: out-of-pocket costs and financial difficulties, delays in accessing care, lack of support.
The States General of Cancer Patients organized by the League in 1998 was followed by three successive Cancer Plans and a ten-year control strategy (2021-2030).
“Demographic bomb”
In the summer of 2022, Jean-Claude Rodenburger, 77, who lives in a village near Sens (Yonne), was admitted to the emergency room for a pleural effusion and came out after a scan and reassuring words, with antibiotic treatment. But seeing him weaken and lose 20 kg in a month, his son struggles “to find a pulmonologist”.
“Impossible: the two specialists at Sens were not taking on new patients, there were none at the hospital.” Fabrice, who lives 120 km from his parents, drives his father “to an appointment in Auxerre, 60 km” from home.
“A real bomb in medical demography in the short term”, Yonne has nearly 4 senior doctors for every young doctor, according to the Atlas of Medical Demography published by the Order of Physicians.
Announced “unceremoniously”, the diagnosis of lung cancer fell after two months: Fabrice then tried to get his father’s chemotherapy to take place closer to home. He “feels abandoned” before being helped by a doctor from the intensive care unit.
“From one day to the next,” he must organize his father’s care at home. “You get a dad who is permanently bedridden, who can no longer walk, needs to be held up for the shower. I desperately asked for home hospitalization” – he obtained it just one month before the death of his father, treated by chemotherapy in Châlons-en-Champagne.
“Stations of the Cross”
According to an Ipsos survey for the League Against Cancer published Thursday, more than one in four patients (28%) have already suffered treatment interruptions due to the unavailability of health professionals or medications.
In a recent report, the National Academy of Medicine warns of territorial inequalities “across the entire care pathway” in oncology and recommends “an active prevention policy” for cured patients but at high risk of complications and early death. .
If he “came across some wonderful caregivers”, Fabrice Rodenburger deplores that the caregiver must “throw all his strength into the battle to seek and coordinate care” in order to soothe a “loved one in permanent suffering”. At the end of a year of “stations of the cross”, he suffered a burnout.
“Side savings”
Another factor of inequalities in the care of people suffering from cancer: the non-reimbursement of supporting care: dietary advice, adapted physical activities, psychological support, hygiene and aesthetic care, etc.
“From a financial point of view, you have to have a nest egg aside,” summarizes Aurélie Gil, 48 years old, child protection educator in Belfort, diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. “From the start of illness, we need lots of things that are not reimbursed: creams against vaginal dryness, varnish so that the nails do not fall off during chemo, psychological follow-up…”, she lists.
For her breast reconstruction, she decided to take out, in order to finance the excess fees, a consumer loan of 2,000 euros.
Cancers remain the leading cause of premature mortality in France among men, the second among women, and their frequency has doubled in around thirty years, with more than 433,000 new cases in mainland France.
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