The friendliest doctor on TV publishes his autobiography, Nothing is impossible (Ed. Stock). If he looks back on his journey, Michel Cymes also reveals the cancer from which he is cured. Confession interview.
Is 65 the ideal age to tell your life story in a book?
Michael Cymes: I don’t really tell my life story because it’s time to say I’m great or make people cry because I had cancer. It’s mostly to try to help. There are quite a few readers who will recognize themselves in what I am saying, either because they have had a health problem, or because they are wondering about their behavior or their reactions.
Like you, not everyone will be “lucky” to discover their cancer by chance. You broke a rib on a ski ramp in front of your son. And doing a CT scan, we saw you had a kidney tumor in 2008…
I admit that I was lucky: they detected my cancer in time. I ask everyone to try their luck and get tested. We can do those of the colon, of the prostate, of the breast, of the cervix. That’s not bad. It’s completely crazy to see that today, half of the people who can benefit from screening don’t do it.
Why didn’t you tell your relatives and pretend a professional trip for the operation?
I only told my wife. I waited until my children were 18 to talk to them about it, especially to Romain, to whom I explained that he had saved his father’s life. I just talked about it to my 11 year old as well.
You have a lucky star that you call your angel…
My angel follows me, yes. I was lucky for my cancer, for my job, for the media. But you have to provoke luck.
Nothing is impossible, is that your mantra?
Yes, Pythagoras wrote : “Nothing is impossible, even the improbable.” All my life, I’ve had that in mind. I forbade myself to forbid myself. Each time I said to myself “What are you risking? Being told no?” That’s how I had the nerve to force the door of France Info.
You also admit to being ADHD-HP, in other words hyperactive and high potential… We risk calling you pretentious now!
I reveal it to help people. To be HP, for many, is Einstein. However, it is also something else. This explains many dysfunctions and it makes you indulgent with yourself. It changed my life.
You have few failures to your credit. We still think of those of Vitamin C and D’Antidote, recently, on France 2. How did you experience them?
France Télévisions asked me to save the damaged box on Sunday afternoon. I could have said no because I’m not a firefighter. I tried, it failed. This is not the end of the world.
You also come back to the “Covid flu” episode, which harmed you. It is Nadine Morano who is at the origin of everything…
I never said that the Covid was a “flu”. She ended one of her tweets like this by talking about me and it went off without anyone bothering to check her words. Those who took this story on the networks are anti-vax and people who, anyway, hate me.
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