The Moselle love dictionary: BREAST CANCER

Let’s take advantage of the first day of October to hang a pink ribbon on the back of all patients’ blouses, all the coats of families and caregivers who are directly or indirectly affected by breast cancer.

Pink October begins and reminds us of the omnipresence of this disease in the French and Moselle health landscape: the cancer be you represents 33% of cancers in women, and, although nearly 80% of breast cancers develop after the age of 50, it tends to affect increasingly younger patients. The number of new cases in France was estimated at 61,214 in 2023, an increase of 0.3% per year since 2010.

Detected early (“caught in time”, as is commonly said), breast cancer is cured in 9 out of 10 cases.

The word “cancer” is no less frightening, and I want to think this morning of those who live in the shadow of cancer. A shadow which casts a veil over normal existence, which opens a pair of parentheses between which uncertainty and combat will take place.

I want to think of the women who see their bodies change, their hair and eyelashes fall out, who have one or both breasts removed, rob them of a part of their femininity. I want to think about the scars. Think of the mothers who decide to hide it, who continue to work and raise their children, think of the courageous mothers who go alone to their chemo sessions, simply because they have no choice, of those for whom it ‘is too hard, who needs to crack. Think of the children, who must understand that their mother is faced with an illness whose treatment is more violent, in appearance, than the illness itself. I think of the disturbed sleep, the side effects, the exhausting trips to the hospital, the drawings, letters and text messages of encouragement, the sweet words, the great sorrows and the little joys, the wigs, the bangs, the nail polish , to the patterns of the carpet in the waiting rooms of oncology departments, to the song of Clara Luciani…