In February 2012 I had a visit to hospital, I afterwards wrote about it in the Irish Times, here it is again for anyone who may have missed it.

Le Crise de Coeur
Over Christmas in Ireland, on New Year’s Day to be exact, having overindulged myself fearlessly on the eve, I developed a painful case of indigestion.
This was unusual in that the pain instead of being centred around the ribs was higher on the chest and stretched between the shoulders. I put it firmly down to the price being paid for the high life of Christmas and, true to form, it responded to a Maalox tablet and dissipated.
As January and February progressed and I was back in France this new version of indigestion seemed to become the norm and I started to get a little quietly concerned. Could it (I whispered to my coward self) possibly be something else? But then another Maalox and I would laugh, and call myself a hypochondriac. Who ever heard of curing a Heart Attack with magnesium?
Then we went for a brief few days into Spain and met there my old buddy Michael. Michael is now single and (like myself) a man of a certain age and size.
He told us that having become concerned about his high blood pressure he had gone to the doctor in the Spanish town where he lived and he had sent him to a Heart clinic in the nearby city. There they had told him that he needed some treatment, in fact what amounted to a minor heart operation. This he did, all successfully.
This certainly made me realise that it was possible that I was acting either like a wimp or an ostrich.
One day towards the end of February Sile and I decided to take a stroll in the hill behind Murviel, after a short climb I had to confess that I couldn’t go on, I was breathless and the chest pains had returned. Finally I slipped out of denial and confessed all to Sile and agreed to see my local doctor on Monday.
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 and even dental expenses in France, we both top this up with an insurance which costs us about €50 each per month..
So on the following Monday I went to see my doctor.
He shared my concerns and organised an appointment for me with a cardiologist.
Because this is France that appointment was made for the following day.
So on Tuesday I went to meet what I now rather grandly call my cardiologist and there I had the usual tests being connected to a monitor by electrodes and then having my chest probed (externally of course) by an Ultrasound machine.
He then made his diagnosis; I had what he called a Flutter, an irregular heartbeat. He was going to put me on a course of tablets and daily injections for a week, make me take a blood test and on this basis he would decide on my treatment.
The system here is that you contact a district nurse, there a several in our village, and you then go to the chemist and get the necessary equipment and she comes and takes the blood for the tests and administers the injections.
Yesterday was the day to return to the Cardio. Having re-attached me to the machine and read the blood tests he sat my wife and I down and told us of our choices to fix this “Flutter”.
There was a procedure in which I would be attached to an electric shock machine and this usually fixed the problem- this usually only took a few hours and could happen in Beziers, our nearest city, but, with this treatment the condition often returned.
The more modern treatment, he told us, involved, going into hospital for two or three days, having an angiogram (basically exploratory but minor surgery) and then some radio wave treatment which tended to fix the problem fully.
Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have to watch ER on the tele will guess why I went for the second option.
Then his secretary got on the phone and within half an hour I was booked into the Cardiac Clinic in Montpellier for two days later.

My Cardiologist had told me to expect to be in for at least two nights as there were two distinct processes to perform, both involving inserting tools of different kinds into arteries and once there being pushed up into my heart to perform their function. (Just like all roads lead to Rome so all arteries lead to the heart).
A little after I had installed my self in my room three nurses came to prepare me, one to shave the places where I was likely to be punctured, one to take my blood pressure and to give me an electrocardiogram and a student to watch and learn.
Then (having observed my girth) Madame the head nurse came back with two navy blue paper overalls, one to wear with the opening at the front, one with the opening at the back (down at the theatre I was to observe that all the little slight French men had to do with only one) and also a fetching little navy bikini bottoms an essential thing to further protect the Famous Dwyer Modesty.
And so, shaven and shorn, having deprived myself off all food and drink for nearly eight hours and with my outfit topped off fetchingly with a baby blue Tam O’ Shanter hairnet the trollyman arrived and hopped me on my Chariot (that is what the French call them) and we headed down to theatre.
Imagine, if you will, Santa (I am large and white bearded) and as a Gay Gordon in a navy paper mini kilt with matching knickers and toning Tam and you will get an idea how alluring I appeared.
We fortunately met no-one I knew on the way down but we did meet a frightened and lost Frenchman who, when I raised my self up in the chariot to see what was going on, gave a little shriek and galloped off down the corridor. My charioteer , it turned out , had spent some time in Sweden , a Northern and Liberal country , so was totally unphased by Santas in drag.
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 “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”.
Thus bolstering my profound belief the French and the Irish share the exact same sense of humour.

Then a frighteningly young anaesthetist grabbed my arm, stuck one leg on the step of the table and with my arm over his knee deftly, painlessly and in a cool nonchalant fashion 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 (the squeamish and the genuinely knowledgeable should look away now) was some sort of soldering iron on a long wire which he then pushed up the artery to the heart. 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.
At this stage I was completely pain-free, my only sensation was a delightfully pleasant feeling which was somehow reminiscent of bedsits in the sixties.
(I think they had dripped in something soothing into my arm to calm me)
For the next half hour or so he fiddled about with the soldering iron in 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.
What he was doing in (very) lay man’s terms was fixing the terminals in my heart battery to ensure that the recurrence of the skipped beat would not happen again.
Then 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 second procedure as well- are you okay with that?”
I was fine with that.
Then he proceeded to push a small camera 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) “He is being too brave, give him another little cocktail there Philippe”! Then a wonderful feeling of wellbeing spread up my arm and through my chest.
I was no longer feeling any pain.
Then as I lay there happily a familiar tune began to hum in my brain.
Then I began to recognise it; Georges Brassans “Copains d’Abord” one of my very favourite French songs- one I love so much I spent many weeks many years ago translating it, painstakingly, into rhyming English.
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 said smiling. “It is my favourite song.”
I then explained how I had translated it etc. A truly surreal moment between him and me, talking about Brassans while he fiddled with my heart. So for the next twenty 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- which was the whole point of his investigation.
After about thirty minutes or so (I was on the table for roughly two hours) he pulled out his camera, mopped up some of the blood from my various wounds and 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”, then he asked “Is your wife here” I said she was somewhere in the hospital. He shrugged and went off.
I then had to wait for a half hour in the recovery room , where I made myself busy teaching the nurse in charge the English terms for Hypertension and Echograph ( look them up) as she was hoping to spend some time on a Stage in England.
Eventually about two and a half hours after I had left it, I arrived back into my room- Sile was there. Before I could say a thing she said “It’s Ok, 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.
Vive Le France!