Francois Mitterrand knew he had prostate and bone cancer since his first year as French president in 1981 but kept it a secret, one of his doctors said Tuesday.
Dr. Claude Gubler also contended Mitterrand, who died last week at age 79, was no longer capable of carrying out all his duties as president as early as November 1994.Mitterrand ended his second term in May. The longest-serving French president this century, he had held the office 14 years.
Mitterrand promised before he was first elected to keep the public informed about his health. Demands for more openness followed President Georges Pompidou's death in 1974 that shocked a nation unaware he had cancer.
But, according to Gubler, Mitterrand not only kept his cancer a secret but ran for a second term knowing he might have little time left to live.
The Socialist president finally told the nation about his illness in September 1992 when he underwent prostrate surgery. By November 1994, Mitterrand could not leave his bed, said Gubler, who treated the president from 1969 to 1994.
"In November 1994 I thought that Francois Mitterrand was no longer capable of assuming his duties," Gubler writes in a book co-authored with Michel Gonot, another Mitterrand doctor. Excerpts of "The Great Secret," due out Thursday, were published Monday by the weekly magazine Paris Match.
"He no longer worked because nothing interested him except his illness. This situation, which lasted many months, was lived like a drama at the Elysee," Gubler wrote, referring to the official residence of French presidents.
Gubler said he discovered the cancer after a summit in Cancun, Mexico, in October 1981, five months after Mitterrand was elected. The president complained of back and leg pains during the trip.
The pain persisted despite medication and Mitterrand was put through a battery of tests the following month that revealed the cancer, Gubler said.
"We finished by telling our patient that he had about five years to live," the doctors write.
"I'm finished," Mitterrand is quoted as having said.
Mitterrand asked his doctors to remain quiet about his condition.
"I was trapped by secrecy, which I would not be able to escape for 15 years. The reign of the lie was installed," Gubler writes.