This one, Renato had not seen coming.
A backhand attack which gives Corinne the point of victory.
"You had me well, Coco", chanted the trainer who like everyone else, only calls the elegant sixty-year-old by the diminutive of her first name.
To think that eighteen months ago, Coco had never played ping-pong.
Concentrated on the orange ball - certainly not more than thirty minutes -, here it is rigorously trying to win the bet.
From the neighboring tables, two meters apart, we hear the same incessant rebound.
Like her, Étienne, Yannick, Fati… are all sick with Alzheimer's, who have come to this table tennis class adapted to their ailments for a respite, a breath of fresh air.
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“Ping-pong, you have to do it seriously,” says Coco, 67, in a so-called “dazzling” momentum, she who has lost the fluidity of words and the rhythm of sentences.
This Friday, the concern was invited in the gymnasium of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine).
"The worst would be that we delete this course," breathes Dany, Etienne's wife, suspended from the announcements of Emmanuel Macron, and their potential consequences.
“You have to do table tennis seriously,” says Corinne, who has been practicing this activity for 18 months./LP/Olivier Lejeune
Because for the 1.2 million people suffering from this neurodegenerative pathology, life in the time of the coronavirus rhymes with anguish, loss of luck and, sometimes, with despair.
"Certain" repercussions
“Have you heard a lot of complaints from families over the past year?
No!
There is incredible resilience, notes Professor Marie Sarazin, head of the neurology department at the Paris Sainte-Anne hospital.
However, the repercussions of the crisis are certain.
It had an impact on the care of patients, on the evolution of their disease.
"
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They remained discreet, did not want to disturb ... But this time, in a forum of the France Alzheimer association that we reveal, the patients and their caregivers - often a husband, a wife, a child, a brother, a sister - express their distress.
“We have seen our loved ones plunge faster, too quickly, into illness.
Despite our dedication, we have witnessed, powerless, the degradation of their cognitive and motor capacities (...) These conditions have opened up a avenue for Alzheimer's ", they warn, after a year of" ordeal ".
Hospitalization of caregivers
Acceleration of language and memory disorders, loss of benchmarks linked to successive confinements, day care which has still not reopened to 100%.
“I remind you that nursing home residents are those who have paid the heaviest price for the crisis.
60% of them have cognitive disorders, but this information has been concealed, Joël Jaouen is moved.
We are also seeing a considerable increase in hospitalizations and caregiver depression.
The context amplifies their loneliness.
However, a caregiver who is doing badly is a sick person who is going badly, ”continues the president of France Alzheimer, overwhelmed with calls, letters and other emails.
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In the family closed door of Levallois, Corinne Monié was no exception.
“The containments have done significant damage.
The canceled medical appointments, with the speech therapist or other, the absence of social life play on the evolution of the disease ”, raises Daniel, her husband.
Coco, she is immersed in reading "Great cemeteries under the moon", by Bernanos.
Meticulously, she crosses out every word again and again after reading it.
The two met in the early 1970s, at a party the day after Corinne's bac.
"She got the Very Good mention, and I got the Very Good girl," he laughs at her loving blue gaze.
We have never left each other since.
»Together, to bring up the three older children, and to welcome the nine little ones.
Together, for the first appointment with the neurologist in 2010. Together, in the storm of diagnosis in 2014. Corinne was 60 years old.
"The canceled medical appointments, with the speech therapist or other, the absence of social life play on the evolution of the disease", raises Daniel, Corinne's husband.
/ LP / Olivier Lejeune
That year, the biologist from father to daughter also returned the keys to her medical biology laboratory.
A nod to the (future) history, she had particularly taken a liking to infectious diseases.
Acceleration of entry into nursing homes
But since the advent of one of them - the Covid - Daniel is afraid.
Fear of catching the disease and ending up in intensive care.
"Do you think I can afford to abandon Coco for three weeks?"
Or to let her contaminate herself and be in the hospital with pipes?
He shakes his head.
The time to be vaccinated, he even abandoned his general practitioner stethoscope for fear of being infected in his office.
Also afraid of seeing her sink a little more each day.
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"
To compensate for the lack, Daniel Monié hired two precious helpers who relay him at home, even as he says "to eat up the capital.
"" Without that, it was the nursing home for my wife and the psychiatric hospital for me.
I shudder.
My nightmare is an acceleration of the moment when we are apart.
But we are very privileged.
In this crisis, few people are so lucky, many have had to place their loved one in an institution.
"
Daniel hired two helpers to allow Corinne to stay in their home./LP/Olivier Lejeune
The cheerful doctor only confides his doubts when Corinne walks away.
In the kitchen, Marie-Josée, at the bedside of the family for thirty years, puts on music, Coco's passion.
She no longer has the memory of words, but suddenly pulls out the notes in perfect, magnificent harmony.
“Give me the courage to make a difference.
And the wisdom to know the difference ”, we hear at the post.
"Regardless of the announcements to come, we will have to protect the sick," Daniel begs.
How does he see the future?
The last time he thought about it, he felt dizzy in the street.
So… "the future, who cares, right?"
I prefer the present!
"
