We will probably invoke bad luck. To be diagnosed with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma – in everyday language, a cancer of the bile ducts – a very rare, incurable disease, a few weeks from confinement, the timing was bad, we are not going to pretend otherwise.
January 2020. My father, 75, asks me for the contact details of a gastroenterologist I know, telling me he has “a little stomach ache”. Consultation, battery of examinations, then radio silence. When the verdict is in, he decides not to say anything about the evil that is gnawing at him. When Emmanuel Macron decreed confinement on March 16, I took the situation as a pretext to force him to speak to me: he confessed to me the cancer, the presence of a 10 centimeter tumor in his liver, the scheduled operation.
It was about time: he is expected two days later at the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), for what the surgeon calls a “risky action”. Since I am now in the confidence, my father asks me to please sign the forms appointing me as “person of confidence”. It is to me, from now on, that the medical staff will address themselves, it is I who will be responsible for attesting to their advance directives in the event of death.
I take the charge. He knows he is doomed, but assures me that everything will be fine, that he will fight. So I tell him the same thing in return: “Everything will be fine, you will fight and we will be by your side. » He makes me promise not to tell anyone about the seriousness of his illness. I insist that he at least warn my brother and my mother. We leave without knowing when we will see each other again – because of the Covid-19 epidemic, the hospital is closed to visits, including to the families of the patients.
The faceless doctor
It is by telephone that I read the operating report, a half-tone report: the intervention went well (understand: there were no complications), but the surgeon is not succeeded in removing the entire tumor – ” too dangerous ” –cancer is judged “very aggressive”. During the eight days following the operation, my father, like thousands of patients, remains alone, without visits in his hospital room. Let’s move on to the episode where his suitcase with his personal effects was lost for twenty-four hours, plunging him into a state of phenomenal stress…
As soon as he leaves, or almost, he goes through treatments with staggering resistance and courage. At each consultation, I accompany him to take stock with the oncologist. The first few months are going pretty well. The disease is not progressing, he supports the medication, we can continue. But over time, the news is less good.
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