2023-10-21 15:31:00
The freediving champion was diagnosed with breast cancer fifteen years ago. On this occasion, she discovered that she had a mutation in the BRCA1 gene which increases the risk of being ill by 40% to 80%. “I never wanted to talk about it, I don’t want people to see me as a victim,” confides the Hérault resident.
Her only known health problem: this syncope which deprived her of a medal at the world freediving championship organized in Cyprus last month. Brigitte Banégas was vying for silver, which she won in 2022, in Honduras. That year, the Hérault resident met Marc Ychou, the director of the ICM, during an awards ceremony, he was a winner for medicine, she in sport.
“It’s a bit thanks to you that I’m here…” she slips to the director of the Regional Cancer Institute aside. Mastectomy following breast cancer in 2009, reconstruction, surgery of the uterus and ovaries… Brigitte Banégas has been followed for years, at the ICM then at the Clémentville clinic in Montpellier. She has a mutation in a gene, BRCA1, which increases the risk of gynecological cancer by 40% to 80%. Her mother died from it, she didn’t know. His grandmother too.
Brigitte Banégas would not be there either without progress in science, the mutation was identified in 1990, the testimony of actress Angélina Jolie made it known to the general public ten years ago.
“When I met Marc Ychou, I told myself that I would talk about it one day”
“When I met Marc Ychou, whom I didn’t know, I said to myself that I too would talk about it one day, because we must use all means to raise awareness. Today, it is time “, says the champion, daily physiotherapist, from her house one street from the sea, in Valras-plage.
The sea is Brigitte Banégas’ universe: in static apnea, she stays underwater for six minutes without moving. If she swims to the bottom using only the strength of her arms, without fins, she now reaches 63 meters, her record. By sliding along a rope, it reaches 80 meters. Fourth, fifth, second… in recent years, she has been among the best at the world championships, now 57 years old, after interrupting her professional career for eight years, from 2011 to 2019: “I stopped competing because I did for the sake of doing.” Before, there was cancer.
“In 2008, I came fifth at the world championship in the Bahamas,” she remembers.
“I acted like I didn’t get it.”
The Héraultaise “talks about that”, with tears in her eyes.
“Even though we are very surrounded, very supported, we are very alone in facing cancer. I acted as if I had not had it. Perhaps because it was not an invasive cancer, that I had neither chemotherapy, which scared me so much, nor radiotherapy. I minimized the mutilations, the forced menopause, at 42. It’s a small end of life but I didn’t give myself permission to complain, I was afraid of wallowing in it, and I didn’t want to be seen as a victim. And I told myself that I was lucky to live in a time where research has progress. Somehow, I protected myself, “pretending as if” helped me to fight. And knowing that everything can stop quite quickly, makes me want to take advantage of it, even though the anesthesiologist had told me : “Apnea is over”.
I didn’t tell anyone except those close to me. I did everything to return to competition very quickly. The body didn’t let me go, it was proof that it wasn’t over. We often think that everything stops with cancer, when your ovaries are removed… that everything stops when you get old, that you suffer… I did as well as before, and even better , lately. In 2011, when I took a break, I went down to 51 meters, today, 63 meters”, she recalls, bitter at not having been able to find a sponsor for the last world championship, at the difference of opponents in their thirties who are less efficient. “There is a lot of youthfulness in sport,” she slips.
“I thought I was back in there again, I had the feeling of being chased”
“Where there is a downside is that psychologically, there is an impact,” admits Brigitte Banégas. The “mutilations” are a trauma: “I didn’t expect it to affect me so much, I started psychological work a long time later, it did me good.”
A few days before leaving for Cyprus this summer, the ghost of cancer caught up with her. A lymph node under the armpit, puncture, analysis… “I thought I was back in there again, I had the feeling of being chased, ten years later, it was difficult, a tsunami. ..” False alarm.
There is no less urgency to send messages: “Get tested and never give up, be in the fight, fight”. Even if, when the illness is announced, “everyone can get down on one knee, we are falling into the unknown”.
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