Maude Schiltz is on Facebook [click].
- dealer avec quelque chose
- c’est en masse
- gagner à la 6/49
Remember, Maude’s book is an account of her experience with breast cancer written in the form of emails sent to a group of her friends.
In email #5, she tells her friends that there may be a problem with her bone marrow, in addition to already having cancer.
She says the bone marrow problem can be worried about later though; dealing with just the cancer is more than enough for the moment:
On dealera avec ça plus tard ; une bataille à la fois, c’est en masse !
We’ll deal with [the bone marrow] later; one battle at a time is more than enough!
If you know the English expression “to deal with something,” then I don’t think dealer avec quelque chose needs too much explanation. 😀
The deal part of dealer sounds like its English equivalent.
But what about the expression c’est en masse? If you’ve got something en masse, you’ve got a lot of it. For example, j’ai en masse de temps libre means “I’ve got tons of free time.”
Maude is telling us that dealing with the battle of cancer is a lot to deal with already, without having to add other problems. Une bataille à la fois, c’est en masse. “One battle at a time is already a lot.” “One battle at a time is more than enough.”
C’est en masse sounds like cé t’en masse.
Still, Maude is very happy because she’s learned that her cancer hasn’t spread throughout her body; the cancer has limited itself to her breasts. She feels very lucky and relieved to learn this:
Vous pouvez pas savoir le soulagement… J’ai l’impression d’avoir gagné à la 6/49, je me sens riche-riche-riche!
You can’t imagine the relief… I feel like I’ve won the 6/49, I feel rich-rich-rich!
The 6/49 is a lottery where you can win millions of dollars. It’s pronounced six-quarante-neuf. A lottery ticket is un billet de loterie or un billet de loto.
You’ll notice in the video that 6/49 is masculine, but in Maude’s quote above it’s feminine. In the video, they’ve used the official name, which is le Lotto 6/49 or just le 6/49. Maude on the other hand has used a generic way with loto, which is feminine: la loto 6/49 or just la 6/49.
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French quotes written by Maude Schiltz in Ah shit, j’ai pogné le cancer (tome 1), Éditions de Mortagne, Boucherville (Québec), 2013, p.33.
