Sophie Auconie received the letter from her oncologist announcing the remission of her breast cancer a few hours before starting the last stage of her “pink march”. A smile of relief spread across his face. The former deputy (UDI) of the 3e constituency of Indre-et-Loire, had embarked in early October on a 250 km walk from Petit-Pressigny, which had seen Axel Kahn grow up, to Bourgueil.
In February 2021, the diagnosis of his cancer “ hit me like a big slap in the face”, she admits. She was forced to resign from her mandate, receiving a warm ovation from her fellow parliamentarians. A memory that will stay forever ” sore “.
Caught up in her work, she admits having been “negligent”, putting off the – essential – checks and screenings until the next day. She felt “infallible, 200% in (his) form, ready to swallow the kilometers in (his) constituency, the night hours to work on legal texts”. During the first confinement, which she spent with her mother in Montargis, she was one of the few hundred deputies ” at the heart of the reactor, continuing to travel to Paris ” on totally deserted highways” to legislate on the health crisis.
Raising awareness about screening and prevention
Yet around her, the examples of deputies swept away by the disease, like Marielle de Sarnez, carried away by leukemia in a few months, struck her with fright. His close relatives were not spared either. “My mom was affected by the same disease. My aunt had two recurrences of breast cancer and my cousin died about fifteen years ago,” says this mother of two boys
By engaging in a march, she wanted to be the voice of the sick, families and caregivers. She seized this opportunity to attract the spotlight to raise awareness of screening and prevention, raise funds for research, fight against medical deserts and advocate for access to the same care for all patients.
Unlike most women with the same cancer, she was able to benefit, “putting great pressure on doctors”, an immediate reconstruction of his chest after having undergone an ablation of the two mammary glands: “When I woke up after the operation, I had an acceptable body. This is what gave me a steel mind to fight the disease. For me, immediate reconstruction, when medically possible, should be automatically offered to the patient, which is unfortunately not the case in France”. She says she is ready to join forces with a parliamentarian to write a report to this effect.
During her walk, which she will resume next year on the occasion of Operation Pink October, Sophie Auconie collected a host of concordant testimonies describing “a medical world that no longer has the time to put the human in the hospital relationship”. She talks about the loss of meaning of the profession of nursing staff, locked in protocols and technique. “I’m not blaming them. I measure how much – for lack of means – they can no longer support, advise, inform families”.
“Take time to rebuild myself”
Politics is really never far away. More than ever, she says to herself ” very proud ” of having beaten Marisol Touraine, the former Minister of Health, in the 2017 legislative elections, accusing her of having installed a culture “deleterious” in the public hospital: “It was she who participated in the codification of hospital acts. For a nurse, sitting on the edge of a bed, taking a patient’s hand, is no longer possible and yet this is what should be put back at the heart of the profession”.
Sophie Auconie shared this experience with Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo, Minister Delegate in charge of Territorial Organization and Health Professions. This one has come a long way with her, “not over the last kilometer but over 12 km, which allowed him to hear what caregivers, patients, elected officials who are experiencing medical desertification had to say”.
Keeping a foothold in public life, thanks to her duties as vice-president of the High Authority for the Regulation of Transport, the former centrist deputy, who participated in the outbreak of the UDI, does not forbid herself to run for a new mandate and, why not, to find the benches of the European Parliament in 2026, where she had revealed herself between 2009 and 2014.
“For the moment, I want to take time to rebuild myself, reconnect with my family and finish writing a novel, my second book (1)”, aspires the one who is also administrator of the League against cancer.
———
His inspiration – In tribute to Axel Kahn
“I wanted to start this march in Petit-Pressigny, the birthplace of Axel Kahn, who died on July 5, 2021.. It’s sort of a tribute. I had a lot of admiration for this former president of the League Against Cancer, of which I am now an administrator. We met regularly. When I was elected, he often came to my constituency, as in December 2019 during the inauguration of the first tobacco-free space in Indre-et-Loire in Ligueil. Although my journey is much more modest than his trip through France (In 2015, Axel Kahn published Between two seas, a travelogue on foot from Pointe du Raz, in Brittany, to Menton and the Mediterranean, editor’s note), I needed – like him – to undertake a walk to do my introspection, to reach out to men and women, to hear the testimonies of the sick and caregivers”.