31 July 2024
I joined the Colpach Rehabilitation Center in 2021 as a nurse in physical rehabilitation. I now work in post-oncology for cancer patients in remission, undergoing treatment, or patients who need palliative care. I have also started a master degree in management for the health and social sectors.
I’ve come to understand that being confronted with illness, or loss, or for instance, when a child no longer dreams, these situations also represents a disability. Even if it’s a one-off event, it can become long-lasting and just as disabling as physical handicap.
I’ve taken the concept of resilience to various institutions, and I’m happy to carry it forward in my work, in the same way as I do in my sporting career.
I learned to live with my disability because I was fitted with prostheses when I was nine months old. That hasn’t stopped me from doing things, not without difficulties. It wouldn’t be true to say that it’s easy and that this professional choice is a harmless one. Nursing is a tough job, both physically and mentally. I’m proud to do it and, without my sport, I don’t think I’d be able to keep up.
As far as my sport is concerned, to be the first person in the world to box at a high level, to be among the best in my sport in the able-bodied category, with a prosthesis in each leg, to have won a silver medal at the French championships in 2022, is unhoped-for, even despite the work and sacrifices it required of me.
What it represents goes beyond the performance. It’s magical, and just like when I carried the Olympic flame, it’s the sharing that thrills me. We all carried the flame together, because the values of sport and Olympism reflect the solidarity, humanity, neutrality and universality that we find at the Red Cross!
On the scale of an establishment, we need to act in 4 spheres: employees, beneficiaries, purchasing policy and relations with our suppliers and, finally, the environmental sphere.
More generally, on a human level, I would say it’s very important to understand and perceive our environment. Let me explain: we have a vision of the world and values, but the way others see us also counts.
Every person, every patient, every employee is a human who is evolving and needs to be considered as such. Working for human rights means respecting our beneficiaries, our employees, and enabling them to grow, to be valued within society, in their uniqueness.