[Life experience by children with brain tumors]

The long-term evolution (intellectual, affective, social) of children cured of their cerebral tumor is far from being satisfactory, despite progress in neurosurgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The feelings of these children and of their family have rarely been studied. The author, on the basis of 60 interviews with such children and their parents, pinpoints the great violence of feelings and situations: feelings of terror, of non-sense, disturbance of the feeling of identity, breaking of relationships, loss of time landmarks. The psychological consequences can be severe: such as being enclosed in a frozen time wrap, and experiencing a lack of social life. If we knew the feelings of these children better, then we could start preventive actions (psychotherapy and specialized rehabilitation) early enough to avoid sequels which cannot be attributed, for all of them, to cerebral damage.