Monday August 2, 2010, Institut Gustave-Roussy, in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). At 29, Sabrina Le Bars, a mother for a few days, asked that the mirror in her hospital room be hidden. After fourteen hours of surgery for head and neck cancer, she says she doesn’t want to see her “broken mouth”.
Thirteen years later, Saturday December 16, 2023, in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne). In a little black cocktail dress, the same, warm smile, famous the Corasso association, founded in 2014 with another patient, Christine Fauquembergue, on the advice of two specialists in these pathologies, François Janot, surgeon at Gustave-Roussy, and Anne-Catherine Baglin, anatomopathologist at Foch hospital, in Suresnes (Hauts-de -Seine). At the time, it was above all a matter of removing from solitude people who had undergone surgery for these little-known cancers that could be lodged in the sinuses, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, etc. “A patient had just committed suicideremembers Sabrina Le Bars. After such an operation, everything the surgeon does is visible externally. The voice changes, we touch on identity. Everyone must learn to reconstruct a new image. »
The private group “Corasso exchangeons”, launched by the association on Facebook, has already borne fruit: during this December evening, on screens dressed in pop colors, parades testimonials of patients who no longer hide. Some of them were already there in 2018 for “What my face? »a stunt operation where they announced, in front of the camera, the title of Johnny Hallyday. “Sabrina Le Bars broke a taboo by revolutionizing communication around this desocializing cancerestimates Sylvie Boisramé, director of the training and research unit (UFR) of odontology of Western Brittany in Brest. The association’s actions have already changed the population’s view of patients. »
Terribly banal first signs
Last September, this university professor and hospital oral surgery practitioner organized, with her ENT colleagues, a screening day where Emilie Carré, secretary of Corasso, spoke with future dental surgeons. This 26-year-old’s cancer was diagnosed in 2020, she says, “after five fruitless medical consultations where I came out with prescriptions for cough syrup”. Sabrina Le Bars seeks to increase the number of volunteers speaking to health professionals. “Visual testimony is much more impactful than theoryshe says. It exposes without filter the often disabling, even disabling and very visible consequences of a late diagnosis. So much so that it is difficult to forget such moments. »
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