Suffering from cancer, Françoise Hardy wants to “leave as quickly as possible” – Libération

2023-12-14 15:57:31

In an interview with “Paris Match”, the singer, in favor of end-of-life assistance, looks back on her long fight against cancer and her wish to leave quickly and painlessly.

She calls for an end to the “nightmare”. In a long interview with Paris Match published this Thursday, December 14, Françoise Hardy talks about her twenty-year fight against cancer and her desire to die. As she approaches her 80th birthday, she asks the weekly to wish her to “leave soon and quickly, without too many hardships, such as the impossibility of breathing”. An idea that she even includes in her projects, which she summarizes as “going to the other dimension as soon, as quickly and as painlessly as possible”.

The singer suffered from cancer, first of the lymphatic system for around ten years, and after remission and a return to the studios in 2018, she was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 2019. Ordeals which greatly affect his physical and moral state. “It’s a nightmare,” summarizes the interpreter of Personal Message. “Since my last and recent radiotherapy, I have been doing poorly because my right eye sees everything very blurry and is painful. My nostril on the same side is blocked all the time. The mouth and back of the throat are even drier.” As a result of this and her mobility difficulties, the singer is deprived of several activities that she loved, such as reading and television, leaving her with “few” pleasures, such as following debates.

Furthermore, “the illness destroys the mind,” she explains, adding that radiotherapy deteriorates her “memory of too many things.” The one who had already spoken out in favor of end-of-life assistance – a law should be presented on this subject at the beginning of 2024 – had previously already repeated on the airwaves of RTL in 2021 that “from a certain moment when there is too much suffering and there is no hope, we must shorten the suffering”, before affirming one’s desire to ask for help to die. A cause which had already entered the life of the singer, who had recounted her complicity in the euthanasia of her mother in this same interview, while the latter was suffering from Charcot’s disease. “It was an extraordinary comfort,” she said.