Breast cancer: talking about it or not?

Philippine de Méherenc

I don’t think that many people are happy to hear this kind of news, so it’s true that telling your spouse, your children, your relatives, your extended family, is not nice in fact, because you think you’re going to ruin their day… Moreover, at this point in the process, we don’t know what to say to them, apart from telling them that it’s serious and at the same time that it’s being treated well, and that we’re being well looked after and taken care of, that we’re going to do what we need to do… But then we’re a bit short, so it’s not very pleasant to be the bearer of bad news.

Isabelle Carbillet

I didn’t want anyone to look at me differently. When you tell someone that you have breast cancer, you know what the first thing people do? They look at your breasts….

I know that I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t talk about it very much, I forbade my daughters to talk about it because I didn’t want – it wasn’t a shame, not at all – I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me, to say: “Oh my poor thing…” I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that. I wanted to deal with it, I only told people in my family, my friends around me, my relatives, it was very limited. Now I talk about it from time to time, when I hear people who have a concern like that. I tell them, “I’ve been through this, you can do this.”