Mélanie Witte, suffering from a very virulent cancer, knows how grueling chemotherapy sessions are: this Vosges woman is therefore fighting to convince of the imperative need to be able to have ready-made meals delivered to her home.
The idea struck this 48-year-old pharmacist-nutritionist, living in Épinal, from her first chemotherapy session. After six hours of treatment, this mother of a 10-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl had felt “so exhausted” that she only thought about sleeping. And not to eat, nor to cook. “I knew about the other side effects but not this one,” she says.
A 29-year-old young woman, companion in misfortune of her chemo sessions, confirmed the urgency of the need: “She lived in Paris. She came back to her parents in the Vosges, and she too was exhausted after the sessions. “, says Ms. Witte.
She immersed herself body and soul in this meal project for cancer patients, which turned for her “into therapy”.
The disease hit him in August. After alerts during the first confinement, which she had refused to face, violent pain decided her to phone her father, a radiologist in Vittel. The next day, a Sunday morning, he was doing an ultrasound. Diagnosis, quick but relentless: stage 4 colorectal cancer.
“I would never have thought to have this type of cancer”, she laments, considering having had a life “without excess” in food and alcohol, and without tobacco.
– “Whistleblower” –
“The scientific literature is starting to talk about stress as the cause of cancer (…) The intestine is the second brain. It has worked a little too much and it + expels the shit + from my last four years!”, Notes- she alludes to her divorce and professional retraining.
She was forced to go back to school and completed a nutritionist diploma.
Her perfectly combed blond hair, smiling, thin, glasses hanging from the neckline of her black dress, Mme Witte does not give the impression of being so seriously ill. “My chemo is not alopecia”, it does not make her hair fall out, she explains.
After her last chemotherapy session, as she has been doing since the start of treatment, Mélanie Witte moved in at the end of November with her parents in Vittel to take care of her. Thus, she does not need to cook herself. “I make her good meals even if she is not hungry because the fight is also on the plate”, confides her mother, Marie-Odile.
Then, Mélanie Witte, refreshed, can leave and run the political meetings to push her project.
The new mayor (LR) of Épinal, Patrick Nardin has become one of his invaluable supporters. “She is a whistleblower,” says the city councilor with “emotion” for this woman who has managed to put “on the table a new subject that deserves our full attention”.
– “Letter to Brigitte Macron” –
In the Vosges, with several favorable cities in particular (Épinal, Remiremont, etc.), an experiment with this home meal delivery service could begin as early as 2021.
A meeting is scheduled for mid-December in Épinal, predicts Mr. Nardin. “Today, the objective is to mobilize and Mélanie manages to unite through patronage”, notes the elected official, about the financing of the project.
Ms. Witte imagines that her meal plan can “work with restaurant tickets or by calling on local restaurants”, thanks to a fixed sum allocated to patients and a charge if there is an overrun. “The important thing is that the meal is good and for the whole family”.
However, according to her, this delivery service should be limited “to three days” because then “the patient must move to heal”.
To perpetuate and extend her idea in France, Mélanie Witte is aware that “a law is needed”. “If we have to write to Brigitte Macron, I will do it. She may be more sensitive to help me,” says Mélanie.
To date, the elderly or certain handicapped people can benefit from assistance, in particular meals. “In the French system, all aid is calculated on the basis of a permanent disability grid” (PPI), she underlines. “But the cancer is (considered) temporary”, she adds, bravado.
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