Testimony in the progestogy scandal: a Toulouse with a brain tumor says his anger
Emmanuelle Choussy took lutenyl, a contraceptive pill based on progesterone for 18 years before a gynecologist alerted her. This Toulousaine discovered that she had a brain tumor because of this treatment. Today she wants to fight.
Emmanuelle Choussy did not feel in danger when her gynecologist asked her to make an MRI. " I have been slow to pass the MRI because in my opinion I did not have a symptom linked to a potential tumor. It was my mistake because it's been 25 or 30 years that I am migraine and that I took multiple treatments prescribed by different doctors".
However, the exam she does on September 8 tells Emmanuelle that she has a 7 cm tumor in the brain. "I took a train in the face! There is no other expression" she reacts on her blog before explaining that she took a contraceptive pill based on progesterone, the lutenyl, for 18 years.
A trying to come
“It is difficult because there is a period of acceptance, it must be said that his life will never be the same again, explains this free lance photographer. There may be heavy consequences. We must consider the operation but we must consider the post-operative too and I am a single mother. How is it going? How long will I be immobilized? I am not an employee, will I be entitled to daily allowances? Will I be able to rework one day? ”.
So many questions that Emmanuelle brews daily in his head as much as to remove his osteo-mening, you have to make a craniotomy, that is to say open the skull, break the bone and rebuild it with cement. A trying operation of which she does not know the repercussions.
An under informed medical environment
Three months after learning the news, she says she is angry with " all those who continue to prescribe this molecule wrongly and through without bringing MRI to their patients. There are many gynecologists who continue to prescribe the molecule and I also want my pharmacist to whom I tried to talk about it who was not aware, to all these generalists that I consulted for my migraines which an MRI control ”.
Emmanuelle does not want to let it go. It adheres to an association, the Amaeva , which has existed for 3 years and brings together from its 2,500 victims site. She thus attached to a Parisian lawyer that other victims also asked, Charles Joseph-Oudin. He is one of the defenders of the victims of the mediator. " We are trying to get two things: the recognition of the causal link , he explains, establish that it is the taking of the product that causes the troubles. The second thing is to assess the damages so that there is a care".
Co-responsibility of labs and state
The lawyer retains the joint responsibility of the labs and health authorities in this new health scandal. " You would be disturbed to discover files where these women are operated on to withdraw meningiomas and by leaving the operation, they have a prescription to continue Androcur," he says to our team. We know today that for years, the undesirable effects are known and that the laboratory and the health authorities have not been sufficiently diligent to correctly inform patients and their doctors prescribing these difficulties ".
“We are very clearly in this Androcur, Lutéran, Lotényl and all these progestin -wide files in the context of a large -scale health scandal with many women who are victims of these drugs, damage that is extremely important, a laboratory that has been slow to inform patients and obviously a health authority which, there too and as we have already seen in other files, has delayed communicating on side effects ”.
Today, these progestins are still on the market. Fortunately, their undesirable effects are better known. But the question arises of their prohibition given the severity of their undesirable effects. In addition, many women still have to be operated on. We cannot therefore take into account all the damages they have caused.
