“A question of survival”: Matthieu Lartot soon to be amputated after the relapse of his knee cancer, he confides in his fight

On the eve of the start of chemotherapy for Matthieu Lartot, the newspaper Noon Olympic revealed that the passionate rugby journalist was going to have an amputation. An intervention related to the relapse of his knee cancer.

Voice inseparable from the matches of the XV of France, Matthew Lartot student today to talk about the disease that has been eating away at him for so many years. At 43, the public service sports journalist faces cancer for the second time. A few days ago, he indeed decided to reveal his fight, going back to “le ring” 26 years after a first tumor in his knee, diagnosed at the age of 15. This had led to the amputation of part of his right leg. An operation which left him with painful and irreversible sequelae . The one who only had”1 to 5% chance of this happening“again regrets to move away from the antennas of France Télévisions, five months before the launch of the Rugby World Cup. A temporary retirement that will allow him to heal.

“After the chemo, the surgeons will have to amputate my right leg“

In an interview with Noon Olympicpublished this Sunday, April 23, the oval ball enthusiast revealed the main stages of his treatment: “After the chemo, the surgeons will have to amputate my right leg, it’s a question of survivalannounces the commentator who can hardly bend this part of his body. I’m starting chemo on Monday.. After that, I’ll have three weeks to rebuild my immunity that the first medications destroyed. Afterwards, it will be the surgical act (amputation, editor’s note) and finally, equipment and rehabilitation“, he lists summarily. Despite this twist of fate, Matthieu Lartot takes this situation “like a release“and admits to being prepared for it”years ago in (his) head“.

A gesture that could save him

Knowing that “the prosthesis that (he has) for 25 years has a limited duration and (that his) leg was too damaged to have another one“, the journalist had therefore anticipated this intervention. “But between preparing for it psychologically and waking up after the operation with one limb missing, there’s a gap that I don’t control… But the important thing is the fight for life; it’s not to keep or not my leg“, he philosophizes. Because the forty-year-old hopes above all to overcome, definitively, this “tumor (…) very rare and very aggressive“.