MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE:EVER SINCE Christmas, I started to suffer from what I took to be a new form of indigestion. But when the situation didn't improve I slipped out of denial and confessed all to my wife and agreed to see my GP.
A brief note about the French medical system. Because we now work in France and contribute to the social security system, we are entitled to a valuable card called a Carte Vitale. This covers a huge amount of one’s medical expenses in France.
So on the following Monday I went to see my GP and, the French system being like it is, an appointment was made to meet a cardiologist the following day.
There I had the usual tests and then he made his diagnosis – I had what he called a “flutter”, an irregular heartbeat. The most modern treatment, he told us, involved going into hospital for two or three days, having an angiogram and then some radio treatment to fix the problem fully. Within half an hour, I was booked into the cardiac clinic in Montpellier for two days later.
Having signed into the clinic I was given the usual swabbing and shaving system by a nurse, who (having observed my girth) came back with two navy blue paper overalls, one to wear with the opening at the front, one with the opening at the back.
Once in the actual operating theatre, I was rolled onto the table where a gowned-up nurse took one look at my double-paper pinafore ensemble and proceeded to cut it from me with a scissors. When I said indignantly (in French): “Madame you are destroying my beautiful dress,” she replied (equally deadpan and quick as a wink): “Ah monsieur, but that blue is just not your colour.”
Then a young anaesthetist deftly and painlessly stuck a universal catheter in my arm. This was to be my mainline for the next two hours.
First up was my radio wave man and he decided to use the groin for his conduit to the heart. What he must have had (I couldn’t see, so the squeamish and the genuinely knowledgeable should look away now) was some sort of electronic gadget which he then inserted into an artery.
He told me that if I felt any pain I was to tell him and he would just increase the amount of drugs he was pumping into my arm.
For the next half hour or so, he fiddled about electronically with my heart, every so often I would feel a burning sensation spread up to my jaw, but it soon passed and I was not going to let Ireland down with a display of wimpishness.
As soon as he was finished, and to my surprise, who appeared at my elbow, grinning from ear to ear, but my cardiologist?
“We decided,” he said, “that while you were here we might as well do the angiogram as well – are you okay with that?”
I was fine with that. Then he proceeded to put something up to my heart via an artery in my wrist. He first of all gave me the same guarantee: “Any pain, just let me know and we will fix it.”
This one was a little more painful but, true to my new heroism, when he asked me was I feeling any, I croaked: “No, it’s fine.”
The cardio shot a look at me and then shouted at the anaesthetist (in French): “Give him another little cocktail there.” Then a wonderful feeling of wellbeing spread up my arm and through my chest.
Then, as I lay there happily I recognised a familiar tune, Georges Brassens’ Les Copains d’Abord, one of my very favourite French songs.
My cardio was crooning it quietly and happily to himself as he worked. “Monsieur,” I said. “C’est Les Copains vous chant.”
“You know this?” he asked smiling. “It is my favourite song.”
So for the next 20 minutes or so, while he studied my heart from many angles (I could see out of the corner of my eye the images on the screen over our heads), he continued to hum Les Copains, a most reassuring sound as I knew that as long as he hummed contentedly about his work he was finding no evidence of heart disease.
After about 30 minutes or so he gave me the verdict: “All good,” he said. “Monsieur has fixed the flutter and I have found no evidence of disease, now you can go home tomorrow and then come into my office next week.”
When I arrived back into my room, Sile was there. Before I could say a thing, she said: “It’s okay, I know it’s good, the cardiologist came and found me and told me all.”
I was amazed that a man so busy could have found the time for this moment of kindness.
I woke up the following morning feeling as light as a feather. Monsieur le Cardiologue was as good as his word, the strong weight I felt I had been carrying under my heart since Christmas was lifted and I felt truly well again, a marvellous feeling.
And then, the final bit of good news; when I called into the office to pay my bill on the way out, madame stamped all my reports and smilingly assured me that there was nothing to pay.
