A big risk: Nathalie Marquay explains why she refused a transplant while battling leukemia

Before becoming the wife of Jean-Pierre Pernaut and the mother of their two children, Nathalie Marquay went through a test that almost cost her her life. At only 30 years old, the former beauty queen learned that she had leukemia. A harsh diagnosis that disrupted her life and led her to make a radical decision against the doctors’ advice. Invited to Les Maternelles XXL on France 5 on Wednesday, May 13, Nathalie Marquay emotionally recounted this extremely difficult period while currently promoting her book “Beware of the Dead”. During the interview with Marie Portolano, the former Miss France explained her decisive medical choice.

Nathalie Marquay made a decision against the advice of doctors, stating, “‘I had wanted to be a mother for a long time. I had leukemia and I risked my life because normally when you have leukemia you have 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 had that bone marrow transplant, I would have been 100% sterile. So I didn’t have the transplant, it was a big risk,” she recounted.

At the time, Nathalie Marquay categorically refused this treatment, despite it being deemed essential by the doctors. She added, “I was 30 years old and I did well without the transplant and had my two children as I felt.” This desire to become a mother was, according to her, a real strength in her battle against the disease. After her recovery, she gave birth to her two children with Jean-Pierre Pernaut, whom she met during Sylvie Tellier’s election.

Interrogated about her role as a mother, Nathalie Marquay described a close and instinctive motherhood. She confessed, “I played a lot, I laughed a lot with them. I had to get up for them, I had to do everything for them, prepare the little fruit sauces, prepare the purees, all natural. A very loving, very nurturing mother, like all mothers. I had maternal instinct right away.” She had already expressed the importance of having children in 2021 on a Facebook page for her publisher.

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 don’t have the right to take that away from me! Since I’m an adult, I can sign a waiver for you.” Ultimately taken care of by a professor who agreed to listen to her choices, the former Miss France was able to recover from the disease without undergoing the feared transplant. A risky decision that allowed her, years later, to achieve her dream of motherhood.