Cancer: Rousseau Explains Why the Conversation Matters

Why did you talk about it? For six months the question has been asked to me tirelessly. Why did I decide on June 3, 2025 to say that I had cancer? My response is always hesitant despite the hundreds of times the question has been addressed to me. Normally, politicians, faced with regular questions from journalists, end up developing elements of language. I did it often when I was Minister of Health, words that we end up knowing by heart.

The need to speak. To say. To almost shout that in the midst of these political invectives, I had something to say. Something that was normally intimate, which would reveal a form of weakness (and when you are a politician, showing weakness is becoming prey), but which had to come out of me.

For me, the only valid answer would be: “I don’t know“. It was planned that I would ask a question to the government, in this excited National Assembly where we often wonder what we are for. I wanted to question the Minister of Health on the resources allocated to cancer research. But I had not planned to talk about myself. However, it ended up overwhelming me.

The need to speak. To say. To almost shout that in the midst of these political invectives, I had something to say. Something that was normally intimate, which would reveal a form of weakness (and when you are a politician, showing weakness is becoming prey), but which had to come out of me. I said it for myself first.

“A sword of Damocles hanging over the head”

I “needed” to say it. Because the person who spoke that day was not exactly the same as three months before but also because I know that the intimate is often very close to the universal. Suffering, pain, illness, fear, the feeling of living with a sword of Damocles hanging over one’s head, this is the daily life of millions and millions of people. And how to say it? How to express the fact that we are scared? That several times a day it seizes you and you wonder if this disease, which has eaten part of your body, will start devouring you again…

So yes, this June 3 at the National Assembly, when I got up from my bench to go to the microphone, I was overwhelmed. Did I know that this exposure of the intimate would be a political act? Because, in the end, what is the role of politics? For me it is precisely to put words, to allow collective sharing, of realities that everyone experiences in their own corner. This is what strikes me. How often, when we finally talk about it, we realize that those with whom we are talking are experiencing the same thing, directly or in their close circle, without ever talking about it.

For me, but also to have human brothers in this fight which will last.

The hundreds of messages I received after my “announcement” all shocked me. I am so privileged. I was able to speak. I was able to take a real break from my job. My family is with me. My MP friends to whom I spoke about it were extremely kind. I know the healthcare system and was diagnosed relatively early. The complete opposite of so many testimonies which told me of loneliness, fear, the concrete fear of losing a job, the fear of expressing one’s fatigue, one’s exhaustion. The fear of speaking out about your own fear. So, yes, it is undoubtedly for all this that I broke the silence. For me, but also to have human brothers in this fight which will last. And so that all the sick people knew that they could say it and that we formed a kind of community.

Without doubt that day, when standing in front of my colleagues, under the gold of the Republic, after leaving my red velvet bench to speak loud and clear, I finally, really, played politics.