“It is July 29, 2016. The weather is very nice, I have been on vacation for a week, at home in Châtellerault [Vienne]. I’m resting after a busy year of work. That afternoon, I decided to change bakeries. Rather than going to the one closest to me, I opt for the one in the city center, rue Colbert.
I have always been very attached to bread. My parents were farmers, and I love everything to do with the harvest; I went to visit mills, I am interested in bread making. I am also very sensitive to smells. That day, near the bakery, you can smell the hot baguettes that the apprentices bring from the back room, but also the smell of tufa stone from the old streets of the city center.
I put my bike down, and I don’t see fit to put the lock on. It’s just a few minutes. I’m getting ready to go to the bakery. Suddenly, short circuit. No pain. More awareness. Absolute absence.
Then I have a vague memory of being in an ambulance, surrounded by firefighters. One of them asks me what my name is, I answer. Then I dive back in.
I wake up in a daze at Poitiers University Hospital, in an intensive care unit. There are three or four nurses who are on hand with me. As soon as I raise my arm, I see my heart rate increase on the monitor. The doctors explained to me that I had “ventricular fibrillation”, which is also called “sudden death”. In short, cardiac arrest. They tell me that I collapsed at the corner of the bakery, and that I was very lucky. An incredible opportunity. In France, the survival rate for a cardiac arrest that occurs outside the hospital is 10%. When I fell, the surgeon continues, the baker saw me and rushed to give me a cardiac massage while his wife called the SAMU. He had learned first aid procedures during an internship at Auchan. That’s what saved me.
“You were all blue”
Once at the hospital, I was placed in an induced coma for two days while the doctors did every possible test on me. They found nothing except a little cholesterol, but in no way was it likely to cause cardiac arrest. I learned on this occasion that one could suffer an electrical failure of the heart. In rare cases, the cause of this failure cannot be found. This was my case. I was never afraid of having a heart problem; to the lungs, yes, because I was a heavy smoker, but I had never thought about the heart.
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