Long before becoming the wife of Jean-Pierre Pernaut and the mother of their two children, Nathalie Marquay went through an ordeal that almost cost her her life. At just 30 years old, the former beauty queen learned that she had leukemia. A brutal diagnosis which turned her life upside down and pushed her to make a radical decision against the advice of doctors. Dance invites XXL Kindergartens on France 5 Wednesday May 13, Nathalie Marquay returned with emotion to this extremely difficult period while she is currently promoting her book Beware of the dead. During the interview with Marie Portolano, the former Miss France explained this decisive medical choice.
Nathalie Marquay made a decision against the advice of doctors
“I’ve wanted to be a mother for a long time. I had leukemia and I risked my life because normally when you had leukemia you had to do a bone marrow transplant and when they told me I had to do it, I said: ‘no I don’t want to because I want to have a husband, a prince charming and I want to have children’. So if I did this marrow transplant, I was 100% sterile. So I didn’t do this transplant, it’s a big risk“, she said.
At the time, Nathalie Marquay categorically refused this treatment, although it was presented as essential by doctors. “I was 30 years old and (…) I did well without a transplant and I had my two children as I felt”, she added. This desire to become a mother was, according to her, a real strength in her fight against the disease. After her recovery, she gave birth to her two children with Jean-Pierre Pernaut, whom she met during the election of Sylvie Tellier.
What mother was Nathalie Marquay to Lou and Tom?
Asked about her role as a mother, Nathalie Marquay described a close and very instinctive motherhood. “I played a lot, I laughed a lot with them. I had to get up for them, I had to do everything for them, I had to prepare the little compotes, I had to prepare the purees, it was natural. A very loving mother, very pampered, like all mothers. I had direct maternal instinct”she confided. On the importance for her of having children, she had already spoken in 2021 on the subject during a book on her publisher’s Facebook page.
After refusing the transplant, she remembered telling the doctors: “If you take away my goal and my strength which is to have children, I will leave! You have no right to take that away from me! As I am an adult, I can sign you a release”. Finally taken care of by a professor who agreed to listen to her choices, the former Miss France managed to cure the disease without undergoing the transplant she so feared. A risky decision which allowed her, years later, to realize her dream of motherhood.
