A top model for several decades, the former first lady of France, Carla Bruni, nonetheless remains subject to the same ordeals as many women.
Among them: breast cancer.
She revealed on her Instagram account on October 4, 2023 that she had been affected, and recently spoke about her illness and the treatment she must follow following her cancer, in the podcast “Allez J’ose!”.
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“I believe that diseases develop in silence”
In the podcast, Carla Bruni says she tried to find out about the reasons for illnesses.
She wanted to understand.
“I believe that illnesses thrive in silence,” she begins.
“I wanted to know if it was related to my lifestyle, to the hormones that I took in my life, to my second child that I had at 44.”
Her doctor is very clear: women who have never taken the pill or have never smoked suffer from the same disease as her.
Blame it on bad luck or a sordid lottery of life.
Carla Bruni lives her cancer away from the media.
Apart from her close circle, no one knows what she is going through.
Until her Instagram post at the beginning of Pink October.
“I made a post because I told myself that it was practically impossible for at least one woman to see this post and not go get a mammogram.
I had a little battle thanks to the screening.
Screening is really fundamental, every year.”
If she had not had a mammogram and her cancer had not been treated at that stage, she explains that she would have had to lose her left breast and chemotherapy in addition to radiotherapy and hormone therapy and of surgery.
Hormone therapy, its post-cancer treatment
Hormone therapy is an oncological treatment that is done for hormone-dependent cancers, such as breast cancer.
“It’s an active drug that reduces tumors, which makes cells disappear,” explains the former model.
After a cancer like the one I had, hormone therapy is prescribed for 5 to 7 years.
It's a pill that you have to take every day.
I bless hormone therapy.
I took it harshly for the first two years.
It gives me pain, makes me gain weight, makes my hair fall out... there are better times to spend.
» One day a friend told him that his mother, too old for surgery or chemotherapy, had a relapse of the same illness and that hormone therapy was saving her life.
“Again it's all about the angle in life, I suddenly saw what he meant and I said to myself: every morning I'm going to take her happy.
I believe that joy breeds joy (...).
I’ll tell you, I digest it better.”
This treatment, even when taken in a good mood, does not erase all his fears.
“I wake up very anxious sometimes, but I use little techniques, and they work.
I was very afraid (of death, Editor's note) until it whistled in my ears.
And there I tried to take it easy,” she concludes with a laugh.
Arrival of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni at the Venice Film Festival
In images, in pictures
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