The video was posted on social networks just a year ago, on January 11, 2021. Looking serious, Emmanuel Macron evokes the silent suffering of thousands of women, “exhausted, worn out by a pain that can lead to fainting”. The evil that affects them is no longer unknown but still largely invisible: endometriosis.
That day, an immense feeling of relief invaded Yasmine Candau. “I thought it was finally the start of something” , she recalls. For more than a decade, this communicator by training, at the head of the EndoFrance association after having been an active member, has been fighting for the recognition of this inflammatory and chronic gynecological disease., leading cause of infertility in France. And now the Head of State officially declares it a national cause, kicking off a major plan to improve its diagnosis and treatment.
Anger, depression and pain
“There was a lot of talk about political maneuvering on the part of the president, who was campaigning at the time. But in which other country has a head of state spoken about endometriosis, explaining that it is not a women’s problem, but a social and public health issue? »points out Yasmine Candau, whose association contributed to the development of the government strategy, alongside doctors and authorities.
She lives in Normandy, but it is from her native island, Reunion, where she spent New Year’s Eve with her family, that this forty-year-old with large black eyes, face ringed with brown curls, tells the chaotic journey of women with endometriosis. – one in ten women. The years of waiting for a diagnosis – 7 years on average – the repeated medical examinations, the incomprehension or even contempt of the medical profession castigating a disease ” fashionable “. Anger, depression, and especially pain. Unbearable, unbearable. “A pain like that, you can’t forget it”, assures Yasmine Candau. She knows what she’s talking about.
Singing as an outlet
She also deals with this disease every day, which in her case has continued to grow in severity. “I can’t say exactly when it started to hurt, but today I can’t remember a single day without pain”loose she, running her hand through her hair, as if to sweep away her emotion.
Endometriosis has colonized an entire part of her body, vagina, rectum, uterus, fallopian tubes, bladder… To stop its progression, Yasmine Candau underwent eleven operations: “nine to remove the lesions, and two others to repair the damage”. Against endometriosis, no curative treatment exists, only drugs to calm the crises. “I know today that pain is a companion for life”, says the activist, who learned to tame it thanks to self-hypnosis and sophrology. She also took up gospel, her “outlet”and walks nearly an hour every day.
Transmission
Mother of two big boys, Yasmine Candau admits to being relieved not to have had daughters, terrified that she was to imagine them suffering in turn. “A few years ago, my mother listened to me for a long time during a radio interview, she says. When she called me right after, she told me that she too had experienced these pains. She suffered from endometriosis all her life, without knowing it. Like many women, she had understood that having pain during her period or sexual intercourse was normal. »
She who has long been afraid of giving her children the image of a “sick mother, always lying down with her hot water bottle or on morphine”realizes today that she has transmitted something essential to them: attention to others. “Today, my sons are the first to learn about and recognize the signs of endometriosis when friends describe their pain to them”, rejoices the one who coordinates 120 volunteers, spread throughout France. Without estimating the part won. “The launch of the national strategy has given a great boost, but we must continue to inform, educate, she insists. We owe it to the 2,800 members of the association and to all the women who go through this ordeal. »
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His compass: repelling anger
Yasmine Candau has long been at war with her endometriosis. She has “hated” his pain, omnipresent. And then over time, the anger left her. “It’s a long road, but you have to try as much as possible not to let yourself be locked into illness and the feeling of injustice”, she explains. It is for this reason that the president of EndoFrance does not present herself as an “endogirl”, a term which designates women talking about their endometriosis on social networks. “Disease is part of us but it does not define us. Otherwise, she won. I am very attentive to this when women ask to become volunteers in the association, because it is difficult to fight this fight while feeling like a victim. There is a work of mourning to be done. To accept the disease is to open the field of possibilities. »