Seven years ... seven years which passed at the speed of light! The duck is still alive and pleased to be so. And yet, at this time, my chances to survive were not highly rated. What did change in the end? Everything!

To say that I am filled with serenity and joy of living would be an euphemism. Apart from the regular check-ups at the Institut Curie, on which I have absolutely no influence (once they have a client, they hold on to her/him), the rest of my life was simply and naturally reorganized in a completly different way.

It's as if I had suddenly discovered that my apartment was nice and all, but really not functional and rather badly-lit, stuffy or noisy, and that I had therefore decided to redecorate the rooms, to create new spaces, new openings and to dump the disruptive elements. In a word, to change everything from floor to ceiling without changing my soul. 

That's what I just did with my life. I got straight to the point by thinking to myself that I had come within a hair's breadth of death. That danger was far from being warded off and that if I wanted to live happier, better , and even in a different way, there would be some painful choices to make. Serenity is dead simple but still, you have to do something special to get it!

From now on, if a problem occurs to me, the first thing I ask myself is: "can we die from it?" Apart from the ridicule which can sometimes kill savagely, if the answer is yes, I launch the ORSEC plan. However if the answer is no, I calm down by telling myself that there are certainly worst things than the ones I am experiencing or dealing with, and so, that there really is no reason to panic. This gives me an incredible strength, which even surprises me sometimes. I feel like I’m a steamroller. Absolutely no thing can stop me. Even when there's a very few chances for me to succeed in what I undertake,  it doesn't matter. I try anyway ... and pretty often ... quite surprisingly.... It works!! Nerve gives me wings. I even feel like I’m influencing François, who is now taking initiatives that he would have never dared taking before, given the low success rate expected. My enthusiasm is contagious. I know that sometimes I’m doing too much. My friends and relatives keep telling me that I should calm down, because if I don't, I'll just tire myself (or is it themselves?) out. It has been going on for seven years, when fatigue will come, I swear I'll calm down.

Another thing, and far from the least important one, is that I'm much more comfortable with sick or disabled people. This comes at the right moment since I'm now working with new technologies and hospitalized children. Having, myself, lived with the regular assaults of this rather unpleasant snake that is cancer may be the reason why I feel close to these children who, in turn, have to fight against the disease. For example, when I have to cross the intensive care unit of a big hospital I regularly go to in order to visit a young teenager who became tetraplegic following a hand ball accident (indeed, it doesn’t only happen to others!), The only things which guide me are his smile, his beautiful eyes and the kindness that comes out of him. I forget everything else. We all mobilized to get an Internet access in his intensive care room. We may not be able to change his future, but we changed his everyday life. And now it's him who gives us strength. At least that's how I feel. I am still optimistic concerning the fast improvement of medicine, and I hope that one day we’ll be able to help the boy out and to give him at least a little autonomy. I feel that I am lucky to be able to ignore all the off-putting aspects of this anthill which surrounds us, as well as being able not to take any account of the dependence of this teenager, in order to think exclusively positively. And so much the better! Yes, disease changed me.

All this does not prevent me from trembling like all my friends at the sight of the slightest bump that could evoke a possible metastasis. I have no  miracle cure for this stress. If there was one, I think we would know. I simply try to prevent the anxiety from creeping durably in my mind when this type of misadventure happens. Then, without being in the utmost of hypochondria, I make the first move and I start the necessary tests. Just to know, for example, whether it is a hip osteoarthritis or a bone metastasis which makes me suffer. When the radiologist tells me that it's a good osteoarthritis crisis, the only thing I want to do is to throw my arms around his neck. Not sure that he would understand it the right way if I actually did that.

I'll always remember how kind were the people who took care of me at the Curie Institut, and who, for some of them, have become great friends (Sister Geneviève, Father Noël...). I know that if one day, things were to turn out badly for me, I will be followed to the end, with no intensive medication or unnecessary suffering. Only dignity. A big weight off my shoulders.

But for now, we're not in that situation. François, Garuss and I are living happily, and we try to share this happiness with all our beloved. And this means a lot of people but... love means giving without limits!