58 292
58
tahar ben jalloun
cancer and the curietherapy
will not work. This treatment
is for cases when the cancer is
not as far along as yours and,
in some cases, where there
would not even be a need to
treat the cancer. But, it’s up to
you to decide. I will meet with
you and Dr. Laplace. If he says
that curietherapy is possible,
then we will do curietherapy;
if not, ablation…” He wrote
a letter about me for Dr.
Laplace.
I didn’t go to the meeting
with Dr. Laplace. I opened the
letter and read it:
Dear Colleague,
I am writing you in regards to
your opinion about a possible
curietherapy treatment for my
patient Mr. Lefranc. With this
letter you will find a copy of
the multidisciplinary meeting
notes from our center and
prostate biopsy results. To
summarize the situation, this
patient has a Gleason tumor
7 (3+4) T2A Nx Mx with a
starting Prostate Specific
Antigen at 3.37 ng/ml…
I then read the report from
the multidisciplinary meeting.
No risks. I didn’t want to take
any risks. After curietherapy,
if there is a relapse, they
can’t do anything else… They
can’t operate. The situation
becomes more complicated
and the cancer spreads.
Cancer… The word is tough
to pronounce. They talk
to you about tumors… but
really it ’s another way to
say:
you die…
1
Laughing
nervously is the only way to
take the joke. Even before
the operation, the doctors
tell you about perineum re-
education sessions. Two
1 Tumors in French is
tumeurs
. If you
separate the word into
tu meurs
, it translates
as “you die”.