Diary of a breast

Seven years ... seven years passed at the speed of light! The duck is still alive and happy to be so. And yet, at this time, I feared for my life. What's changed in the final? Everything!

Saying that I am filled with serenity and joy of living would be a euphemism. Apart from the regular check-up at the Institut Curie, that I cannot change (when they have a client, they don’t let him go) the rest of my life was simply and naturally configured again otherwise. It was as if I suddenly discovered that my apartment was really nice but not really functional and rather dimly lit, poorly ventilated or noisy. Then, I decided to redo the paint, to create new spaces, new openings and to throw out the disruptive elements.
Redesigning from the floor to the ceiling without changing my soul at the same time.

I did the same in my daily life. I got to the heart of the matter by telling myself that I had come close to dying. That danger was far from being eliminated and that if I wanted to be happier and have a better living in a different way, there would be some painful choices to make. The serenity is simple but it still has to be deserved!

From now on, when a problem emerges, the first question I ask to myself is: "can we die from it?" Apart from the ridicule that can sometimes kill brutally, if the answer to the question is yes, I launch ORSEC plan. If the answer is no, I calm people down by telling myself that there are certainly more serious things than the ones I am dealing or living with, so there is really no cause for panic. It gives me an incredible strength, which, some time, even surprised me. I feel like I’m a steamroller. Nothing can stop me. Even if, sometimes, I’ve only a little chance to succeed in what I’m undertaking, no matter. I'm trying anyway ... and often ... to the general astonishment.... It works!! Cheek gives me wings and I even feel like I’m rubbing off on Francis, who is now launching himself into undertakings that he would probably never have endeavoured before, given the low success rate expected. My enthusiasm is contagious. I know that sometimes I’m doing too much. My relatives tell me that I should calm down, or I will end up getting myself tired (or themselves?) . It’s lasted for seven years, when fatigue will come, I’ll be calm, I promise!

Another detail but not the least, I'm much more comfortable with the sick or disabled people.. That's a windfall because now I'm working around new technologies and hospitalized children. It’s perhaps because I endured attacks from a crab rather loth that I feel close to these children whose time has come to fight against the disease. For example, when I have to go through the intensive care unit of a large hospital in which I regularly step in to visit a young tetraplegic teenager following a hand ball accident (I’m afraid so, it doesn’t only happen to the others!) I am only guided by his smile, his beautiful eyes and the kindness that comes out from him. I forget everything else. We are all mobilized to bring him Internet access in his intensive care room. Since we can’t change his future, we changed his everyday life. I still hope that medicine will make rapid progress and that one day we’ll be able to pull him out of trouble and give him back at least a little autonomy. I am fortunate to be able to ignore all these off-putting aspects of the surrounding anthill and the dependence of this teen to only think positively. And so much the better! Yes, the disease changed me.

All this does not prevent me from trembling like everybody else since I have a superficial wound that might suggest a metastasis. There is no miracle cure against this stress. If there was one, I think we would already have noticed it. I try very mundanely to make sure that anxiety does not settle permanently in my mind when this type of misfortune occurs. Then, without being an extreme hypochondriac, I take the initiative and I begin the necessary examinations.. Just to know, for example, whether it is a hip osteoarthritis or a bone metastasis that makes me suffer. When the radiologist tells me that I have a strong osteoarthritis crisis I would like to throw my arms around his neck. I’m not sure that he would understand my act if I would follow through my desire.

The kindness of the people who took care of me at the Institut Curie and, some of them who became great friends (sister Genevieve, Santa Claus...) will be always in my heart. I know that if, one day, things were to turn out badly for me, someone will go with me in my last instants without intensive medication or unnecessary suffering. Just with dignity. It takes a big weight off my shoulders.

For the moment there is no problem. François, Garusse and I are living halcyon days and we try to show this happiness to all our loved ones. And this means a lot of people but... when you love someone you don’t calculate!

The Dream painted in 1932 by Pablo Picasso is the portrait of the painter's mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter .- 130 X 97 cm - Oil

Sold $ 48402500 to Steve Wynn for auction at Christie's in New York in 1997. The Las Vegas billionaire Steve Wynn who recently had to abandon the sale of the Picasso, having punched his elbow through it. The deal he had just concluded would have turned this painting info the most expensive in the world ever. The agreed price would be U.S. $ 139M. The record of the most expensive painting is the Gustav Klimt’s portrait by Adele Bloch-Bauer I for $ 135M US.The blog of  the Huffington Post tells that the incident occurred while Wynn was showing the canvas dating from 1932 to his guests in his office in Las Vegas. The American screenwriter Nora Ephron is said to have been the witness of the scene. According to the rumour the billionaire suffers from the pigmented retinopathy,  a degenerative disease of the retina that affects peripheral vision. 

Saint Bris

Region: Bourgogne(French administrative region)

Production area: located about ten kilometers southeast of Auxerre, specifically within the tons of Chitry, Irancy, Quenne, Saint Bris Le Vineux et Vincelottes and in the administrative department of l’Yonne.

Classified as: AOC communale.
Decree of 2003/01/10
The provisions of the Articles of the Decree of 1974/08/05 on the Sauvignon de Saint Bris is repealed.

- Area under production: just over 100 hectares

- Grape varieties:
White: Sauvignon,
Gray: sauvignon.

- Wine making in white only.
- It can be drunk: young, 3 years maximum.

- Ideal temperature to enjoy it: between 8 and 10 °C.

Must be savoured with:     a grilled andouillette or scallop with noilly


The Saint-Bris

Béatrice Maillard-Chaulin prefaced the book Cancer du sein.

Many oncologists use the term “tunnel” to refer to cancer. They say they are helping us to go through it to take us to a possible cure. I do not completely agree with this image of the underground passage.

When you are on a highway and you reach a tunnel, you usually see some signposts like "switch on your dipped headlights", "reduce your speed. In you’re prepared!

With reference to the breast cancer, you often enter the tunnel without any preparation, neither physical nor moral. Provided you driver a bit fast upstream, the shock is even greater!

Everything rushes at the beginning of this assault course. The good tips are flooding in massively. There is your good friend who is very familiar with the cousin of Professor So-and-so, who himself is quite familiar with the brother-in-law .... there is your other friend who knows a clairvoyant psychic, .... and pour neighbour whose mother died of breast cancer 20 years ago, theme is ... .. there is....

There is, ultimately, a good crisis to manage when advisers of all kinds surround us, you find it difficult to find our way around in and you have to must clear decisions, fast ones and sometimes irreversible ones. Not easy to deal with all this!

This book is the book that I would have liked to find in my way on the day I started my adventure against breast cancer that struck me, 8 years ago. Yet, we cannot say that I lacked of information or attention from the medical team that I decided to give my trust to and abandoned, during the time of treatment, my little bruised body.

The problem is that there is often a serious gap between the information that you are given and the one that is actually received. We can say that it is both a matter of time and mood. When a doctor says something to you, it is not necessarily easy to understand. For my part, I always remember the day Dr. Clough told me my cancer was more serious than he imagined and that my breast should be removed as a matter of urgency. That day, I felt like my brain had suddenly fossilized. He could have explained me all he wanted, the very nice Dr. Clough, I didn’t understand anymore! It was the next day or two days later that I would have liked to have answers to the questions I was finally asking to myself.  Except that my interlocutor was unfortunately no longer by my side to answer me!

And then, there are those who want to know a maximum about their disease and those who decided that they preferred not to clutter up their mind with technical details that do not seem essential. It takes all sorts to make a world… This book allows us to make our choice and go shopping whatever you think best among this mine of information.

Through this approach, I fell like I find this respect of my freedoms that accompanied permanently my relationship with the team who was looking after me. During my disease I was never uninformed or disempowered. While I was advised, surrounded, I was still the one who kept the control. Through this ‘new wave ' doctors’ behaviour, I was able to play an active role in this fight we had together and I derive much pride from it. I would like to thank them here.

I have two wishes to express. The first is that research would make such progress that the book quickly becomes obsolete and that a new edition gives us more hope. The second is that doctors like Dr. Krishna Clough or other doctors that I met around him are cloned as soon as possible so that all my comrades in hell (past, present or future) could also meet them on their way. That's all I hope for hem! Solidarity oblige!



Béatrice Maillard-Chaulin
Auteur de « Journal d’un sein » ( "Diary of a Breast")