Chapter 5 — March 12

On March 12, 2024, I walked into my gynecologist’s office thinking I was going to receive a result.

I didn’t know I would walk out with a new life.

I had gone alone.

By car.

The day before, while I was at work, the office had called and asked me to come in as soon as possible.

I had asked if it could wait until the next day.

They said yes.

And somehow, that had reassured me.

If it can wait until tomorrow, it can’t be that serious.

That was the logic I had held on to.

So on March 12, I drove to Gland by myself.

I walked into the office of a woman who had known me since I was thirteen.

Dre Rotzetter-Oterro.

She had been my gynecologist for years.

I sat down.

She had the results.

And then she told me.

Cancer.

I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Not because I didn’t understand the word.

I understood it perfectly.

Maybe that was precisely the problem.

I laughed because my mind refused to accept that this word could possibly belong in a sentence about me.

That’s not possible.

You’re joking, right?

This is a joke?

She wasn’t laughing.

She remained serious.

And slowly, the reality of her expression began to collide with the absurdity of what I thought I had just heard.

Cancer.

Me.

Twenty-seven years old.

Cancer.

The words didn’t fit together.

Then the tears came.

While I was still trying to understand what had just happened, Dre Rotzetter-Oterro was already moving forward.

There were things that needed to happen.

More examinations.

Specialists.

Appointments.

Treatment.

She was talking to me, and I could hear her voice.

I could understand the words individually.

But none of them seemed capable of staying inside my head.

My mind was stuck somewhere else.

On one sentence.

I have cancer.

Everything after that became noise.

She offered me a choice between two oncologists.

A man.

A woman.

I chose the woman.

At that moment, it was one of the few decisions I was still capable of making.

I preferred to be treated by a woman.

Her name was Dre Kohlik.

Dre Rotzetter-Oterro didn’t simply give me a name and tell me to make an appointment.

She called her.

Right there.

In front of me.

She explained my case.

My age.

My situation.

She insisted that Dre Kohlik take me on as a patient and see me as soon as possible.

I watched her on the phone.

I knew something important was happening.

I knew people were already organizing what came next.

But I couldn’t really process any of it.

Medicine had already started moving.

I hadn’t.

The doctors were already thinking about examinations, treatment, appointments, decisions.

I was still sitting there thinking:

I have cancer.

It is strange how quickly the medical world can move after a diagnosis.

One minute, you are a person waiting for test results.

The next, you have an oncologist.

A treatment pathway.

Appointments.

A file that suddenly needs to move quickly.

Everyone around you begins preparing for the next step.

While you are still mentally standing in the exact moment when someone said the word.

Cancer.

Eventually, I left the office.

I walked outside.

There was a terrace.

I sat down.

And I cried my death.

Not my treatment.

Not my hair.

Not surgery.

Not the possibility of recovery.

None of that existed in my mind yet.

Cancer meant one thing.

I am going to die.

Three days earlier, I had turned twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven.

On March 8, I had undergone the biopsy.

The next day was my birthday.

I had worked that weekend.

My colleagues had made me a cake.

I had smiled.

I had been happy.

I hadn’t spent my birthday wondering whether I was going to die.

And now, three days later, I was sitting on a terrace crying as though my life had already been taken from me.

I called Jean-Louis.

He answered in a light, cheerful voice.

He sounded happy.

Then he heard me crying.

His voice changed immediately.

I told him.

I have cancer.

What I didn’t know was that I was on speakerphone.

His colleagues heard it too.

But none of that mattered in that moment.

I didn’t have to ask him to come.

I didn’t have to explain that I couldn’t drive.

I didn’t have to tell him I needed him.

He simply said:

“I’m coming.”

He asked me to send him the address.

He told me to wait there, to stay calm, that he would get to me as quickly as he could.

Jean-Louis was at La Praille, in Lancy.

I was in Gland.

He got on his scooter and came all the way to me.

When he arrived, I was still crying.

We left the scooter in Gland.

He took the wheel of our Yaris.

I moved into the passenger seat.

That detail seems so small now.

But I remember it.

Because only a few hours earlier, I had driven myself there.

I had arrived as the person in control of the car, of the journey, of what happened next.

And now I was sitting in the passenger seat.

Somewhere along the way, Jean-Louis took the cigarettes and tobacco and threw them away.

All of it.

He was searching for an explanation.

For something responsible.

Something he could remove.

Something he could control.

Maybe the passive smoke.

Maybe this.

Maybe that.

When something terrifying happens, sometimes the mind desperately searches for a cause because a cause feels easier to bear than randomness.

If something caused it, perhaps removing that thing could somehow protect me.

I kept crying.

And Jean-Louis tried to do something incredibly ordinary.

He suggested sushi.

So we went for sushi.

Cancer had entered my life that morning.

And somehow, a few hours later, I was sitting somewhere eating sushi.

There is something almost absurd about the way ordinary life continues around catastrophe.

People eat.

Cars pass outside.

Someone laughs at another table.

A waiter asks what you would like to drink.

And inside your head, your entire existence has just collapsed.

We ate.

And then I thought about work.

Of course I did.

I had been given a long medical leave certificate.

And I wanted to take it to my workplace myself.

I wanted my bosses to hear it directly from me.

I didn’t want questions.

I didn’t want rumors.

I didn’t want people trying to guess what had happened.

So I asked Jean-Louis to drive me there.

I walked into the place where I had spent so much time taking care of other people.

This time, I wasn’t there as the caregiver.

I had a medical certificate in my hand.

I gave it to them.

And I said the words again.

“I have cancer.”

Only a few hours earlier, I had walked into a medical office alone.

I was twenty-seven.

I had a job.

A relationship.

Plans.

A Yaris parked outside.

And a lump in my breast.

Now, I had an oncologist.

A medical leave certificate.

And a word that had moved into my life without asking permission.

Cancer.

Maybe that was the real moment my existence split in two.

There was the Arjelynne who had walked into that office without knowing.

And the one who walked out, sat on a terrace, and cried her death.

Between the two, there had only been a few words.

But they had been enough.

For the first time in my life, “before” had come into existence.

And I had no idea yet what “after” was going to cost me.