Odile Espesset, a Sarcoma Hero

l Everyday Heroes

This Team Sarcoma Everyday Heroes entry was submitted by Elodie from Edison, New Jersey. It was awarded second prize in the competition, and $2,000 has been donated to synovial sarcoma research in Odile’s honor.

When I was diagnosed with sarcoma, I lived in the USA while my parents were still living in a little French town, not far from their birthplace. My parents decided to take turns to come help me. Through his work, my father often traveled abroad and spoke English, but my mom didn’t. She did follow English classes in high school, but obtained a shameful 3/20 grade at the final exam. Afterwards, the little English she had learned was thrown away in some inaccessible place of her brain for the next 35 years of her life. No English would come out of her mouth or reach her brain if it happened to reach her ears. I also happened to marry a Russian who cannot speak French. His behavior is a total mystery to my mother and a source of common misunderstanding.

After my diagnosis, my mom crossed the ocean and the border control on her own and became our shopper, cook, cleaning lady, my 4-months-old son’s babysitter, my driver and my nurse. She had to learn how to drive on American roads, how to read American directions, how to communicate without words, how to find basic items and the stores that sell them, how to ask for gas, how to handle American appliances, how to cook Russian and how to deal with an angry, frustrated cancer patient while caring for a baby. For months, I was the only one she could speak French with but was not in a mood for talks. I was either too tired or too angry to have a healthy conversation. Despite this challenging, awkward, destabilizing environment, she truly mastered her job as a caregiver. Since then, she has gone back to France and taken English classes.