FROM THE CORRESPONDENT, PARIS – I am as I hoped: totally serene, writes the great French doctor Axel Kahn, 76, who announced that he has a few weeks to live. Kahn is very well known in France because for years he has been part of the bioethics committee, participates in radio and TV broadcasts, writes books, until a few days ago he was president of the League against cancer and was one of the most listened to voices – and criticism of government delays – during the pandemic. But the disease against which he fought so much has reached him. Kahn is using social media to say goodbye to the French: every day he spreads photographs and reflections that are a hymn to life and an encouragement to face its end with a pacified soul, without anguish or regret.
I will die soon – he wrote on Facebook on May 26 -. Any curative therapy now impossible. It can only reduce the pain reasonably. But I am as I hoped: totally serene. I smile when my medical colleagues ask me if an anxiolytic would give me relief. I feel no anxiety, no hope – I keep excluding the hypothesis of a good god – no anguish. A certain relief, rather (…) My broadcasting job was very busy, I couldn’t do more. I went from the presidency of a National Cancer League meeting in the morning to the operating room in the afternoon. Almost ideal. So, smiling and calm, I say goodbye to you, dear friends. Axel Kahn.
The professor immediately received hundreds of messages, and continues to receive each time he posts one of his frequent messages on Facebook or Twitter, a photo of a walk near his house in the country, or a thought for family members, or a reflection on life. and about death. a farewell to life meticulous, almost hour by hour, which surprises for self-control and serenity. Professor Kahn said long ago that he was marked by his father’s suicide, when he was 26, and by the message you leave him: Be responsible, be human. During his career as a doctor, Kahn was also tempted by politics, on the left, but in 2012 he narrowly missed the election as a deputy, narrowly defeated by outgoing premier Franois Fillon. In recent months, Kahn has spared no criticism of the government, especially regarding the disastrous delay accumulated in the first weeks of the vaccination campaign.
Alongside a photo of sunrise over the sea (left), Axel Kahn writes on Twitter that until April I was making programs year by year; then by season, and then the milestone was the weeks. It is now only the dawning dawn that I will see, amazed, in the blue light. Yet it is always worth it. Readers respond with other images of landscapes, sunsets, and with words of thanks, exchanges between the philosophical and the staff that are very different from the usual uproar present in social media. The benevolent celebration of life and the world is due to someone who is about to leave them. The day before, next to a photo of the doctor with his son at the stadium and a rugby ball in his hand, another message: “There is only the culture of life. The culture of death is just a depressive pathology. One always prepares for life, there is no need to prepare for death. This is true if you have to live 50 years, 50 weeks or 50 hours. Long live life ”.
May 31, 2021 (change May 31, 2021 | 15:26)
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