Your cancer is healed, you are considered a “hero”, a “survivor”, a “fighter”. If the disease has manifested itself during childhood, you now have “life in front of you”. But once the majority have passed and behind this warrior vocabulary, for young people, the fight is far from over.
Each year in France, around 2,260 new cases of pediatric cancer are diagnosed in children aged 0 to 17, according to the National Cancer Institute. If the survival rate is reassuring (85% due to five years after the diagnosis), from a psychological point of view, juvenile patients are regularly left on the tile. For these young adults, the arrival in the world according to is under the sign of anxiety and complicates social and professional relations.
The impossible return to “life before”
“When I got out, I had the guideline not to fall”recalls Laura. More than twenty years after a double pathology, leukemia diagnosed three months after birth and osteosarcoma (bone cancer) treated at the age of 13, the young woman of 35 years finally allows herself to go badly. The one that has long tried to “Put cancer aside” was caught up in adulthood by a strong feeling of guilt.
“Many patients try to say that everything is fine after the end of treatments, because they already feel guilty of having imposed their disease”explains Amandine Bertrand, a post-Cancer specialist doctor and child psychiatrist in the center for the fight against cancer Léon-Bérard de Lyon. The post-cancer period is “Very critical” in young people, supports the practitioner, who describes patients “Both relieved and abandoned” When stopping treatment. “Throughout the disease, patients are very surrounded by their loved ones, but also health personnelcontinues Amandine Bertrand. With the cessation of treatments, everything stops and the return to before is not really one. ”
“The feeling of guilt in relation to those who have not healed can be felt in adulthood.”
Leo never experienced this “Back to life before”. However, his family tried to impose on him. Now 24 years old, he was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma (white blood cell cancer), while he was in CE1 class. From now on, the consequences go back to the surface after years of hibernation. “For ten years, my entourage considered that the subject was closed since I was healed”tells this former patient who had the ban on talking about cancer to his comrades. “I built myself as an adult without being able to talk about this event.” Tapping in silence, Léo continues the crises of anxiety. As a child, he is afraid of dying. Adult, he feels guilty.
Societal discrepancy
At first glance, it is impossible to detect the passage of cancer at Léo. An advantage that intensifies its “Impostor syndrome”. “I feel like I had a smaller cancerhe admits. However, when I talk about it, I am considered a hero. I am the one who defeated, who is stronger than the disease. I don’t have this impression, otherwise what does that mean to others? I am made to pass for someone I am not. ” “The feeling of guilt in relation to those who have not healed can be felt in adulthood. The old patients then feel guilty of being alive ”Amandine Bertrand analysis.
This illegitimacy translates to Léo by an anxious temperament and a lack of self -confidence. If the consequences of his cancer are not physical, sometimes he happens to him “To be elsewhere” In the middle of an evening with friends, his attitude earned him the label of “Depressive”. In recent years, this original Lyonnais has to reconcile this psychological state at work. “I put myself a lot of pressure on this point because I have the impression that I was imposed on dreams of greatness during my healing. At the same time, I have the feeling of not being up to it because I have this imposture position. ”
Unlike Léo, Laura is one of those that cancer has marked physically. From now on, she undergoes in society the consequences of heavy treatments inflicted on her body, including chronic fatigue which has long prevented her from “Enjoy life” Like the comrades of his generation. “At the start of my majority, I got more easily with older people, I felt like people my age were a little more naive and less mature.”
Like Léo, the young woman did not immediately find her place in the world of work. During her second cancer, Laura lost one of her peonies, part of the left maxilla and the sight of one of her two eyes. “I had a part -time time, but I was dismissed for incapacity. That’s when I told myself that I had to do something that drives me up ”she recalls.
Reclaim the disease
Just two years ago, following her dismissal, Laura felt the need to “Recappection (sound) History”especially that of her first cancer, of which she has no memory. In a podcast (With full teeth), she decides to interview her parents and ask them all the questions that she had never had any answers. The discussion is “necessary”. There are many parents of patients who keep certain information to preserve their child. In the process, Laura joined the association Les Aguerris, made up of 50,000 adults healed from cancer during childhood or adolescence.
“In my imagination, I was going to die of a third cancer before my 30th birthday. I was convinced that this time I wouldn’t get out of it. ”
Léo has also invested in this association during his university years. “When I got closer to the experiences, I was able to chat with former patients, this is the first time I felt understood. I have aware that I had the right to reclaim my story, that I had always based on the story of adults. ” It was following these meetings that the young man initiated a conversation with his parents. “I told the story with my words, it rushed them. I was in confrontation with a story that I had heard all my life. ”
Today, Léo and Laura follow a psychological follow-up respectively, but are regularly led to repel other medical meetings. Léo has been backing up a cardiac ultrasound for months because she reminds him of large phases of anxiety. For her part, Laura confesses to having “Arrested to see her oncologist for ten years, because each meeting was synonymous with bad news”.
The one who is today an image counselor for remission patients reveals that he was haunted throughout her twenty by the possibility of a new diagnosis. “In my imagination, I was going to die of a third cancer before my 30th birthdaysays Laura. I was convinced that this time I wouldn’t get out of it. ” This fear is legitimate in former patients in pediatric cancer. According to the Léon Bérard cancer center, “Certain types of chemotherapy and radiotherapy increase the risk of second cancer”knowing that “The risk is higher after having been treatment during childhood or adolescence”.
When they were children, neither Laura nor Léo have heard of the after-cancer difficulties. “The more the old patients grow up, the less they are followed, the more the consequences appear”concludes Amandine Bertrand. The child psychiatrist thus underlines the need for deployment of psychological follow -ups in former patients with pediatric cancers.
