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Family Calendar of Matrescence

1:34:44 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Christelle recounts eleven years of Martin's brain cancer and demands funding for a disease research forgot.

  1. Distil information to children, never a family secretChristelle spoke of "dad's brain disease" for years, used the word cancer only at the end, and prepared the children months before the death.
  2. A village around a family changes everythingFriends, family and school set up visit rotas so Martin never had a lunch or a dinner alone during months in the clinic.
  3. Brain cancer is not funded or cured4,000 deaths and 6,000 new cases a year, research unchanged in 30 years, and a 5% survival rate five years after diagnosis.
Executive Summary AI
  • Clémentine Sarlat introduces Christelle, mother of three children, whose husband Martin died after an eleven-year battle against brain cancer.2:25
  • Three weeks after their daughter Jeanne was born at the end of 2014, a scanner revealed a 6 cm tumour in Martin's brain; he was 30 and Christelle, 27, was in full postpartum.8:44
  • Remission was officially signed in June 2016, after a ten-hour awake surgery in February 2015 that removed two-thirds of the tumour, three months of re-education and almost a year and a half of chemotherapy and radiotherapy; the couple then had two more children through PMA, in 2018 and Arthur in 2021.27:42
  • At the end of October 2024, after an epilepsy crisis the previous June, the MRI confirmed the cancer had returned, and two chemotherapies plus the experimental treatment voracidinib all failed, leading to a re-education clinic in June 2025 and then palliative care at Jeanne Garnier.47:05
  • Martin died on 31 January 2026 at the age of 41 after donating his brain to science, and Christelle, who only then documented a cancer causing 4,000 deaths and 6,000 new cases a year with a 5% survival rate at five years, decided to commit herself to research.1:29:35
Key Quote
“I will not be able to save your husband.”
— Christelle1:03:13
Key Quote
“But I wanted to reassure you, if that ever happens, we'll always be a family.”
— Christelle1:11:12
Key Quote
“It's that in fact, we don't cure brain cancer today.”
— Christelle1:29:30