They made the great crossing: announcement of the disease, operation of the breast, chemo ... They saw themselves lose weight, change of skin, of face, lost their hair, their hairs, their eyebrows, often their libido . And yet: they have never given up being and feeling a woman, and living with all their strength their battered body.

Martine, 44 : "I had the best time of my sex life"

I did not even have any breasts, no rules, my mother's doctor pointed at me and said, "You young girl, you have to be careful. My mother died of breast cancer at 42, my grandmother at 39. I told myself: "Lightning will not fall three times in the same place. She died in April 2009. This cancer is an "alien" who wanted to eat me, eat my family. I went to war. I told him, "You get out. "

I remember my first physical shock, after the start of the chemo: when I discovered the whole bottom of my face sagging, dry, covered with wrinkles.

It was very violent, I took ten years in a morning.

I was afraid. Though I thought I was not sick, I was. The products of chemo acted . Cancer was attacking my face, and the face is our identity. I have always been extremely careful about myself, and there I could not do anything anymore. I took my car and went to see my beautician girlfriend. "How will I find my skin? - She will rehydrate, be patient. "

I forced on all wrinkle creams. I made a lot of effort to prepare myself to become as before. The loss of femininity was for me a transitional stage. The future, healing. I had very long hair , down the back. On the day of her seven years, my niece told me, "I want the same as you. I knew that eight days later I would not have any more.

My femininity lodged in my hair.

When the oncologist saw her, she looked at her secretary and immediately prescribed a wig . I went to pick a redhead and bought a red dress. I had my hair shaved . I thought, "I'm nothing. I calculated how long they would repel. I was always in the after.

A man I could not see, who lived abroad, came back to me when he knew I was sick. "It's not your hair that counts, it's your life. He slept with me the day before the operation ... Femininity, she is also in the eyes of the other. I had the best time of my sex life. I had desire. He was so happy that I was alive that he showed it to me by making love. When someone touches you as if you were the most beautiful in the world, you believe it. He looked me in the eyes, held my hand, touched my cancer. He wanted to touch it.

Since my breast has undergone a deformity, it is harder than the other, but it's still mine.

It's not my breast that defines who I am.

I finished all my treatments on ¹ May 2010. As a woman, I have gained nor lost anything. What has changed is my relationship to my family . There are many more parties than before. I want to give them memories. I fought the enemy, but I know I did not hit him.

(*) Martine Carret wrote "Cancer? Not even afraid ! (Archipelago edition)

Alice, 55: "I take a lot more time to take care of myself"

I am 55 years old and I am a woman standing. My name is Alice Chest and it's not for nothing that I kept my maiden name.

When the doctor told me about ablation, I collapsed. How to accept a mutilation?

I will not be a woman anymore. I cried in his arms. Then breathed a good blow and went to repomponner.

It was the day of the tsunami in Thailand, and I remember thinking, "What is Madame Chest's breast compared to that? But it was my catastrophe . What do I do ? I continue to live where I let myself go? I was ready to join my darling, who died of lung cancer. But I fought.

On my birthday, I was totally removed from the right breast. When the bandage was removed, I had contempt: it was not me, it was not my body. For several days, I just put a washcloth under my T-shirt to not see my bust. Then I got up. I bought reinforced bras in which I put a piece of fabric. I did not even go to make a prosthesis, I do not see the interest.

For the wig, it's the same thing: I found it very ugly, I had the impression of a sauerkraut on the head. When I had to shave, I turned my back to the ice. Then I turned and shouted, "Oh, I'm beautiful! I left with the wig on my head, but I immediately took it home.

I am still bareheaded. If someone rings at home, I open like that. My face, I try to illuminate it. I sit in front of the mirror and think of all those artists who paint their faces, a stocking covering their hair. I learned in a class to shake my eyelids, put false eyelashes.

To be beautiful is to make a nice gift.

If I have to go buy a wand, I make a little beauty and I put a scarf. I bought six at the market, I play with.

When, in my neighborhood, I hear "You're pretty," I take the compliment. I need it. I take a lot more time to take care of myself. I can stay an hour in my bath by letting the hot water run, I massage myself, I put cream from head to toe ... I pay attention to me to show that I am in shape, not to seduce. With cancer, we do not want to seduce. I do not have a spouse. I dream of finding a man, but I can not. I miss a lot of sexuality, my body craves. So I'm having fun alone.

I need tenderness, too. With my friends, we hug each other. My roommate pampers me, kisses me in the neck, comes to chat in my room. But my 28-year-old daughter never sees me sick. It's my choice. When I am very ugly, very tired, very white, no one sees me. It's not for my daughter to protect me, even with this damn cancer, I want to stay a mother for her, a grandmother for my grandchildren.

Today, I feel mutilated, but I am also protected from the guys who dredge stupidly.

Men who know me look like a real woman. They are more true to me. There is even one who told me that I had "grace". I learned to accept myself differently, I learned patience because I have no choice. From now on, I only dream of one thing: to go to the block for a reconstruction of the breasts . I hope they will be pretty. I live in this hope. The other day, I was a naked skull with my grandchildren, who said to me, "We want you to stay that way, you're so pretty. It is a gift, a plenitude of which I gorge myself. I am mortal, I am afraid of death, but it does not matter. As long as we leave a luminous trace ...

Coralie, 41: "I left my jacket" and my t-shirt, I took the dance again "

I was 34 years old, I was nursing my baby when I felt a ball . My daughter was 6 months old. The cancer announcement was a shock.

I experienced my first chemo as a tunnel whose exit was the end of treatment, and the challenge, healing. With my husband, we only thought of cancer. He took care of the daily tasks, of our daughter, preserved me from everything. But this immobilism, for me, was like death. I realized with the other chemios, that I lived differently. Because I have relapsed twice. I realized that the tunnel of the disease was also real life.

I left my tracksuit and my T-shirt, resumed the dance. I found the pleasure of this physical relationship with the dancer, my body in motion, my place as a woman. I took care of my little girl, who needed a mother.

I discovered the patients' home at the Institut Curie, women showed me another way. They became girlfriends, sisters. I learned to put a cream gently and not in force, to put on makeup, to look at me. The appearance, before, did not count. Femininity, we did not learn it.

I had short hair, a severe look, I discovered a smile, another me.

I was afraid of losing my hair - the collective unconscious pushes us - but shaving was a liberation. I am of Laotian origin and women, at some point in their lives, shave their skulls. I really liked this state, get to the bottom of me and the basics. I started naked, as if, in my life, I wanted to make a clean slate. I wore a wig for my husband, my children, for the eyes of others, but I loved my skull without hair. I found myself beautiful. It reminded me of Sinead O'Connor. I released authenticity, purity.

I was also relieved when, at the third recurrence, the surgeon decided to remove my breast. He had become a foreign body. I had mourned over time. My breast left at the same time as my cancer. I refused the reconstruction. Finally what would she bring me more? Rejuvenate because I have a very beautiful chest? I do not want to. I have a big scar. It does not bother me, I cling to Amazons. If there were not the eyes of others, I would not even wear a prosthesis. My body is there, it's my story, I have the strength to accept it.

My husband almost accepts the absence of breast more than the mutilated breast, he begins to come to my scar. We are no longer in the frenzy of sexual intercourse, in its savagery.

My husband understood that we had to invent another sexuality.

Being attentive to each other, caressing each other, talking to each other is much more important to me than orgasm, which I no longer have.

I have one breast less, but another femininity exists. The disease refers to a femininity that is not displayed. Before, I did not think I was feminine because I was neither beautiful nor sexy. Today I feel woman in my actions, in my life. Being a mother is no longer just a biological act for me, it is feelings. I built a link with my daughter. Cancer, I did not fight it like we go to war, it was a message to say: "You take a wrong path. It may be that I die, it may be that I die of something else. But I found pleasure again. To face death is to rediscover the taste of life.

Breast cancer: the opinion of the psychiatrist

MC   : How does a woman feel hurt in her femininity during breast cancer   ?

Sylvie Dolbeault * : There is a prejudice, especially among some male surgeons: breast cancer is an immediate and irreversible damage to women and their femininity. However, the first thing a woman thinks about when she is told about breast cancer is "cancer", "illness", "vulnerability"
and "lethal risk".

As a woman, that said, she will actually suffer a collapse of her bearings and not just on the breast itself. The treatments will upset the whole body, causing transient or irreversible marks: scarring, weight gain, change in skin texture, loss of energy and sexual desire , hair loss, eyebrows. Hair is more often talked about because it is the most visible part, but women are more affected by the loss of pelvic hair, eyebrows, eyelashes.

Some tell their body become a girl's body, they do not recognize any more, evoke the image of the girl of Hiroshima. The feeling of no longer being a woman comes more from all these elements than from the cup of a breast itself. Each will have to give up their identity before and work on this new body. The most affected women are those who have invested the most in their physical appearance , who define themselves very much by it. This brings back to an essential question: "Who am I? Being a woman, is it related to my temperament, the way I built myself, the attachment I developed for others or what I give them to see?

What is the damage to or the loss of a breast   ?

The relationship of a woman to her breasts is very variable. For some, they are an indispensable asset, a sexual asset very invested, they highlight, play.

Losing a breast or seeing it damaged can completely call into question their identity.

And then, there are women for whom the breast has always been a bad object, a part of the body difficult to invest because it was too small or too big, or because they have very badly lived, teenagers, the birth of their forms.

The breast is not always the organ of femininity and sexuality! Some have had a magnificent reconstruction, considered perfectly successful by the surgeon, but will suffer all their lives. If they had not anticipated this new breast, if they had not been told that they might not have any more sensation, that it could be hard, cold, they could reject it. To put back volume, it is not to find its breast. One must have mourned the lost breast, because it is lost forever. Some that can not be rebuilt will perfectly tolerate it.

They sometimes do not even want breast prostheses, what they call "cache-miseries". They prefer nothing rather than fake and sometimes assume this new identity in an incredible way.

The role of the spouse -   if it exists   - is it important   ?

Major. Women are very afraid of this: their spouse will leave because they have breast cancer.

But separating couples were very often in trouble before.

The latest studies show, on the contrary, that spouses are getting closer. The spouse who remains will have to adapt to the changes in his wife's body, understand that she may not want sex, or dare not show herself without her breast, with her big scar that bar the thorax.

During a chemo, physical fatigue and low libido are often very important , concerns often worsening things. The spouse may ask herself: "How to manage this period? How to keep an intimacy while our sex life can stop? " It is important
to distinguish sexuality and intimacy. A woman may feel in a strong bond with her spouse, in a physical intimacy without being sexual that will allow her to continue to feel loved. He can help her to accept this body, to appropriate it by caressing it, by massaging her damaged breast. If he is too out of step with what his wife is going through, there is a risk that they will not be able to find each other.

What Resources Can Women Have to Help Accept During Illness   ?

Some find the resources in them. It is a question of temperament, personality, constitution: it is the capacity to cope, to adapt to a highly stressful event , to accept new rules and priorities. There are women who have difficulty accepting chemotherapy, which sometimes go so far as to refuse it because, for her, losing their hair is a destruction of their femininity.

Conversely, others - even if the loss is very painful - will be able to say that it is transient, that their hair will grow back.

Some will need to be accompanied by a psychologist, supported by other patients.

Cancer is a breakthrough that forces everyone to refocus on their own needs. Many realize on this occasion that it is time for them to take care of them.

I think of all those women who are very busy with their work, their families, their children ... Previously, studies of women with breast cancer focused only on measures of anxiety, distress and depression . Now, we are interested in "post-traumatic personal growth",
evaluating positive changes.

(*) Psychiatrist, Head of the Psycho-Oncology Unit at the Institut Curie, Paris.