VIVELA FRANCE!
Terry Maguire’s itinerary for his recent trip to Biarritz didn’t include a visit to A&E. but that’s exactly where he ended up! So impressed is he with the French system that, instead of thinking of the NHS, he’s now thinking ‘Vive la France’!
By Dr Terry Maguire
W
hile on a recent holiday to Biarritz, I was wakened by a constant burning pain in my chest in the early hours of
the Wednesday morning. I got up and walked to the bathroom, tripping over my suitcase and wakening my sleeping wife. Standing in the bathroom, I hoped the pain might lessen but it stubbornly remained.
I had had chest pain and breathlessness walking back from the restaurant the evening before. Biarritz has a steep incline up from its roaring surf beaches, but the pain had eased when I reached flatter ground and it disappeared, as it normally did, when I stopped walking. The Friday before, I had had a similar episode walking home from work so I now, in the darkness and cloying air of early morning, I knew I was in trouble.
Foolishly attempting not to alarm my wife, I told her I needed to see a doctor, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and walked downstairs to reception. It was a small, three-star hotel and I worried no one would be on duty. I calmly told the receptionist that I had chest pain and suspected a heart attack, so she quickly telephoned an emergency number.
Within twenty minutes, an ambulance was outside the hotel and I was driven off in darkness to the A&E at the main regional hospital. Passport, European Health Care card and COVID-19 vaccination status were recorded, a PCR COVID-19 test and bloods were taken and I was stretchered into a private room to await a doctor who, when he arrived, insisted - in broken English - that I should not attempt to stand up. By now, my confused, anxious wife had arrived by taxi and was allowed to join me. Our immediate and long-term future was, uncharacteristically, uncertain.
Within half an hour, blood tests were back and a heart attack confirmed so, with a negative COVID-19 PCR test, it was agreed I should be admitted. I was given a bolus dose of anti-platelet medicine to challenge clotting and, by 11am, I was in a private ICU bed, my chest and right arm wired up to an ECG/BP/oxygen saturation machine and a saline drip inserted into my left arm.
By late afternoon, I had had a five-year old stent replaced in my LED coronary artery, but when I
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