Shiloh Calvary, 13

Paris Match. How do you feel ?
Diane Diakite. In the evening, I go to bed, I descend into hell. I would have a rope, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. If I find the strength to get up, it’s to maintain my daughter’s grave.

Which little girl was Shiloh?
DD Calm. I dreamed of having a daughter. The name Shiloh comes from the Old Testament and means “gift from God”. But I lost faith. After the funeral mass, we buried her, her father and I, alone, in the strictest privacy. I was in charge of the mortuary toilet, I didn’t want anyone to touch her. We weren’t prepared for her death, she wasn’t in hospice care. We were told a “life expectancy of five years”. Six months later, we still don’t know what our daughter died of. As she was mutilated, she suffered martyrdom, I feel unable to have her dug up for an autopsy.

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Before she got sick, what was her life like?
DD She was always tired, she repeated. Since March 2019, she had been home-schooled. Divorced, I had decided to be a stay-at-home mother to devote myself to my daughter. At the end of 2020, it started to swell. She had trouble moving, her stools were abnormal. The doctor prescribed suppositories. At the beginning of March 2021, while she was taking her shower, I saw redness and streaks on her left breast. Then she broke out with pimples. Our GP ordered an ultrasound. In the meantime, I spent days and nights on the Internet. For me, it was cancer, but the radiologist said: “Madam, breast cancer does not exist in children.” To which I replied, “Shiloh is taller than you, she’s not a child. It is a young woman I bring to you.”

Modibo Diakite. Throughout her journey, my daughter has never met the right people. Except at the Franco-British Hospital of Levallois-Perret, months later. That’s when they saw what she had…

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“Breast cancer does not exist in children!” I’ve heard that so many times. But Shiloh was no longer a child

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DD After the ultrasound, our GP prescribed antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. No improvement. On April 6, we go to the pediatric emergency room in Eaubonne. They direct us in gynecology. Shiloh sees an intern, who is worried about whether there are animals in the house. We have a Persian cat. “She would have been scratched, she would have bumped?” On ultrasound, they detect a deep inflammatory pocket. A second radiologist leans towards an allergy. What to understand? They are the doctors. “Breast cancer does not exist in children.” I’ve heard that so many times! And me to insist: “But it is a woman!” Re-antibiotics, a horse treatment, without even a sample. It was heavy, she was vomiting. There, my daughter has already lost her smile, she walks with difficulty. If you or I had presented ourselves with a breast in this state, we would not have been let go. But he was refused screening tests.

Your lawyer, Me Sabine Doucinaud, evokes a refusal to provide appropriate care…
MD We are in a country with a good healthcare system, why didn’t my daughter benefit from it? The only thing they were able to do: prescribe antibiotics, for five months and without result. It’s going through my head: if a doctor doesn’t know, he directs to another! I also want to testify to the mistreatment she suffered from the caregivers. One morning, I heard them exclaim, “Ooh, how can you stay in there? You have to open the window! We come back later.” It was his infection that smelled bad and they address us, the parents, like that, and in front of our daughter!

You follow appointments, the disease progresses…
DD We had to see a dermatologist. I found an appointment in a center, in Saint-Lazare. We had to queue for eight hours to be seen at 5 p.m. by an exhausted doctor, who, in less than three minutes, recommended an endocrinologist to us without even having her undress! At the endocrinologist, same refrain: “Breast cancer does not exist in children.” Faced with the worsening of his condition, his general practitioner sent us back to the emergency room. After two failures at Eaubonne, we go to the Argenteuil hospital. The breast was beginning to ooze, as seen in the photo.

MD Out of modesty, she refused to show me her chest. Mom was taking pictures so I could see how serious it was.

DD So, in the emergency room, we show the photos, we are told that there is no dermatologist. For the first time, Shiloh stands up and asks for help: “You’re not going to leave me like this, lady!” We finally enter. The beginning of Calvary. A young pediatrician is worried because we have changed hospitals. She suspects someone hit her. We undergo a police interrogation. Shiloh is tired, so we want to leave, but the threat of a report drops. It is 10 p.m. when she finally goes up to a room.

MD She stayed nine days in the hospital, perfused. We were still not told what she had. I challenged the doctor: “Why don’t you listen to his mother when she says it’s cancer?” In the corridors, when they saw me coming, they ran away from me.

What do you attribute this attitude to?
MD I can talk about discrimination, but I can’t prove it. I am Malian, I have an accent. The doctors said that I didn’t speak French well, they even corrected me. If I had been French, I would not have been treated like this. Too often we are silent, but here, I want to say it. In the file, everything proves that I fought, that I was a good dad. I would have done anything for her, I even launched a kitty to have her treated abroad. At Curie, the doctor came up to me, embarrassed, the medical file in his hands: “How is it that they renewed the antibiotics so many times?” In Argenteuil, a doctor acknowledged his colleague’s inappropriate behavior on the phone. But when we started the process with our lawyer, it was not the same.

DD He dared to tell us: “In any case, she would have died anyway.” Like that.

Have you lost trust in the medical profession?
MD I decided to file a complaint even before the death. At Curie, they recognized a “very late takeover”. She loved everyone, Shiloh, so generous and mature for her age… In her hospital bed, she insisted that I come home: “Go take care of Moussa, he is still small.” She adored her half-brother.

At the end of July, you are referred to a center specializing in dermatology in Levallois-Perret…
DD From there, Shiloh is taken care of at the gynecological emergencies. She relaxes, smiles again. They are very caring. They finally listen to me. We are at the beginning of August. The word cancer is pronounced. We are referred to the Senopole of the Saint-Louis hospital, which specializes in breast diseases. Biopsy (the results of which we will only have after his death), examinations, treatment… When, one morning, I receive an SMS summons to Curie. Curie equals cancer, whereas until then we were only told about mastitis or “benign tumour”! “I’m sorry you found out like this,” the doctor told me over the phone. And at Curie, it was a fiasco. She died in pain, in pediatrics where she had nothing to do! While in Saint-Louis, she was in the right place!

MD Today, we are waiting for the truth, for the samples taken from my daughter to be seized by the courts.

DD With such a serious illness, she was followed by interns. She has never met the wonderful great teachers who practice in Paris. Curie deprived us of it.

For sixteen hours she waited for the puncture

How are his last months going?
DD She was being treated with chemo on an outpatient basis, the comings and goings were exhausting her. Only her doctor knew how to make certain gestures, but he had too many patients and, therefore, he delegated, she was butchered. Shiloh didn’t want to be touched anymore. The failures multiplied, the caregivers became aggressive towards her. She was finally hospitalized on November 30.

MD On December 7, the day before his death, the doctor called me: “We did an X-ray, it is better than the previous one.” I’m surprised because her mom tells me at the same time that she’s not well. I rush to Curie, she is in such a state! I call his doctor again. He replies that his mother is doing too much, that we shouldn’t worry. It’s 11 p.m., I see black liquid coming out of his mouth, I’m looking for help. Doctor on call kneels in front of Shiloh, tells us she’s alone for five floors. That night, we fought to get her out. I ended up going home. Around 6 o’clock, I felt like a breath. I don’t know how I managed to get up and take the train to Paris. I call the doctor to puncture her, relieve her. He tries to lure me into his office and, faced with my refusal, says to me: “In two hours, it will be over.” I could not believe it ! The day before, he wrote me a reassuring e-mail. I was considered a nobody.

DD For sixteen hours she waited in agony for the puncture. We called for help. But almost nobody at night, almost nobody on weekends. Children are in danger!

MD This morning of December 8, after the puncture, Shiloh is better. She even asks me to watch TV. And there, a team of doctors warns that they are changing the protocol. They remove the devices and plug in two boxes. They give us real hope… But the nurse who performed these gestures was not well doing this, we never saw her again. With the psychologist, we went out to get the doctor. I asked “Is Shiloh gone?” He looked at his watch. “It didn’t even take two hours.” Shiloh shouldn’t have died under those conditions.