Cynthia draws her strength from her eternal optimism.
Brain cancers are rare and little-known diseases in France, yet each year, nearly 6,000 people receive this diagnosis. It is the second most common cancer among children and the second leading cause of cancer death among young adults. On National Brain Cancer Day, December 3, we met Cynthia, who has been living with a brain tumor for 14 years.
A few weeks before her life turned upside down, Cynthia, 29, noticed disturbing events in her body. “I would wake up shaking, with a lot of saliva and then go back to sleep. I didn’t know that in reality I was already having small epileptic seizures.” One day she makes a “very bad epileptic seizure during the day”. At the hospital, the diagnosis falls: “I had an MRI and a PET scan and discovered that I had this famous grade 2 oligoendroglioma in the left area of my brain, the language and mobility area on the right side of my body.” This brain tumor is characterized by a mass which, by pressing on brain tissue, causes epileptic seizures, intense fatigue and memory loss.
The announcement is a shock. “My son was just a year old. It was like a bomb.” In Belgium, where she lives, the operation is unthinkable because the risk of damaging language and mobility neurons is too great. “At the hospital, they just gave me medicine for epilepsy.” But Cynthia copes. “I have a rather positive personality. I always move forward, I fight. Besides, I hate the word ‘tumor’. I’m not dying.” After two new severe attacks, she contacted another hospital which found a doctor capable of operating on her while she was awake. The operation took place the year of diagnosis, in 2011. “He put me to sleep, opened my skull and woke me up to work on the tumor while showing me images to ask me what I saw: horse, house… I also had to move my hand when he asked me.” The surgeon removes 75% of his tumor “the size of an orange. There was the equivalent of a ping-pong ball left.” The after-effects are immediate and serious. “I couldn’t speak anymore, I confused the words for a year and a half. It was horrible.”
Cynthia recovers her language and returns to work part-time but the disease returns. “Two and a half years after (the operation), it had grown again. I was in chemotherapy for a year.” The young woman goes through moments of respite and chemotherapy sessions coupled with radiotherapy. “Today, it’s mainly fatigue that I’m experiencing. It’s not easy. There are sometimes misunderstandings with those close to me. I seem completely normal, when I walk around, when I talk to you, you don’t know that I’m tired. People don’t realize. I have to refuse certain outings.”
To cope with this exhaustion, she finds new resources. “I discovered therapeutic yoga, it’s crazy! Yoga, based on breathing, brings peace.” She is also interested in Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine. “I learned a lot about meditation, about letting go.” Without forgetting the strength she draws from her role as a mother. “My son, I give him what I can give him, hoping to die very late. But I have this joy of being a mother, it is he who gave me this joy of living.” Cynthia sees her doctors regularly and takes treatment for epilepsy. “I see my epileptologist every 6 months.” She lives with her fatigue and language difficulties, sometimes searching for words, but remains more optimistic than ever. “During an appointment with my doctor, when the MRI and PET scan were stable, I told him: ‘I would like to live to be 100.’ I choose life.”
Thanks to Cynthia for her testimony. Comments collected on November 6, 2025, as part of a meeting organized by the pharmaceutical laboratory Servier.
