Amputated last June due to knee cancer, Matthieu Lartot gives his news when he will comment for France Télévisions on the matches of the Rugby World Cup.
Like the XV of France of his friend Fabien Galthié, Matthieu Lartot is actively preparing for his Rugby World Cup (which will begin on September 8 with the huge clash against New Zealand at the Stade de France). Victim of a recurrence of knee cancer and forced to have his right leg amputated on June 16, the journalist from France Télévisions will be released from a rehabilitation center in a few days and then resume service commenting on matches of the Global.
Lartot, 43, gives his news in an interview with the Point this Tuesday. “ I am optimistic, my exams are more than encouraging and all the lights are green! But I don’t consider myself safe yet and I’m still going to be under close surveillance for another five years, he confides. This heavy surgery was a matter of survival for me. It allowed me to get rid of a disease that I suffered from since adolescence and the doctors and I gave ourselves the maximum chance to eradicate it definitively. “.
Mentally prepared for 25 years
And to continue: But all patients know it: you don’t get cured overnight and you live for a long time with the somewhat sneaky threat of cancer. Still, I endured the operation well. Because unlike road accident victims, who wake up one morning without one of their limbs, I had mentally prepared myself, for twenty-five years, to experience this one day. My leg was damaged, stiff, and amputation had long been a possibility. “.
The native of Mantes-la-Jolie himself revealed his fight against cancer last April, the general public then discovering his illness. He was keen to address this taboo subject: “ Name things! Cancer exists and it is even very widespread. You don’t have to be ashamed of being sick, you have to dare to wear it in the public square. In this process, I also hoped to be able to help anonymous people who are going through the same ordeal, or whose loved one is going through it, to feel less alone in adversity. “. Matthieu Lartot is soon back in French rugby.
