“Comment dit-on Heart Attack ?”
An American with heart attack symptoms spends seven hours in a French Emergency Department. The first chapter in a surprising health mystery.
On December 16, 2022, days before my 41st birthday, I was having a heart attack. Weeks leading up to that day I had been having occasional heart pain and palpitations. I’d be walking along and could feel my heart miss a beat. I thought it was acid reflux or maybe a pulled muscle from pilates. At night if I lay on either side of my body it felt like my actual heart was compressing; being squeezed flat. I would lie awake, on my back, and feel my heart struggling ever so often. During the day my arms, both, tingled occasionally. I kept thinking it would stop if I took it easy.
On December 16 I was in the local camera store with my six-year old and bent over to adjust a tripod. That’s when my heart felt like it had been stabbed. The burning pain shocked me but I stayed calm so my son wouldn’t notice. I stayed still and took a few breaths. And then my arms went totally numb and I actually felt my blood pressure, which is naturally very low, plummet. I thought I was going to throw up and pass out.
As I walked home to make sure my kids were set for me to go to the Emergency Department here in Bayonne, I called my husband and told him to get the cargo bike ready and then called my dad and asked if we had a family history of heart attacks.
“We don’t,” my highly optimistic and reassuring dad then said something I will never forget: “Get to the hospital, NOW.”
We live within a 5 minute bike ride of the local hospital. It’s faster to ride than call an ambulance. I climbed into our cargo bike and my husband rode to the hospital. Most of the commute is past the massive city cemetery. I remember looking out the plastic cover of the cargo bucket thinking that this was how I was going to die, at the age of 40. It was surreal and real.
As I walked into the hospital I practiced new French vocabulary in my head: Crise cardiaque (heart attack). Douleur thoracique (chest pain). Engourdie (numb). My French is so-so when I’m feeling good. That day I didn’t encounter a single English-speaking healthcare worker. From triage to discharge I had to speak in French and understand French. And I thought I was dying.
The triage nurse asked if I had my French insurance card and I had to explain that I was American and would be paying with a credit card. It was almost funny. “Hi, I’m dying. I will pay by card.” The emergency nurse rushed me into the assessment room, saying paperwork could wait. He was kind and I am forever thankful for his urgency. Then, in the crowded hallway of the E.D., he told me to take off my shirt and bra and assigned me a rolling bed next to an E.C.G. (électroCardiogramme, no “k” in French). Topless in public, hooked to a machine, I started to cry.
The E.C.G. came back normal but because I was clearly having heart attack symptoms they proceeded to do blood tests that would detect heart damage. I got my own room (the same one where my husband had his chin stitched after a bike race crash) and a hospital gown to drape over my chest (it felt like a luxury at that point) and was hooked to a monitor. A nurse came and checked my blood pressure regularly. But I was alone. My husband was home with the kids. My heart was still missing beats and painful but I felt reassured by the monitor. So long as it didn’t make any warning alarms I was okay. After an hour the nurse came in and said the first blood test was inconclusive. She put a port in my arm “just to be safe” and took more blood for a second test.
Then the most terrifying thing of the day happened: A different nurse rushed in speaking fast French I didn’t understand and proceeded to roll me out of my room. I thought I was going to the Operating Room. I started to sob. “Why are you crying?” she asked in French before yelling “Does anyone speak English?” No one did. I told her I was “peur de la chirurgie,” scared of the surgery, and she said, in French and slowly “We need your room for another patient. You are okay right now.” I was put in a smaller room, like a closet, across from the lab. I was relieved but then had a front-row seat to chaos.
Our closest hospital is wonderful. We are so lucky to have it. But it is very old and France is having a healthcare crisis. Our hospital has an overall score of “B” from the Ministry of Health. Built in 1868 it was remodeled throughout the years to serve different purposes, most recently in 2005. It’s modern enough to have a helipad but the ancient brick building has some slightly creepy, boarded-up rooms and unusable wings. After decades of patchwork remodels the government decided to build a new hospital with an urgent care but it was built further away. It’s the one we usually go to for scheduled appointments. But in an emergency having a hospital in the middle of the city is lifesaving. 3,000 people work at this hospital and, after the pandemic and union fights over heath care worker pay and rights, you can tell they’re mostly exhausted.
The doctor on call was at least a decade younger than me. The nurses looked like teenagers. I was reassured knowing they all had studied the most recent medicine and treatments but as I watched them all RUNNING around, actually running, I worried that they were overwhelmed and didn’t have the most experience. I was not the most sick person. I heard someone having what seemed to be a schizophrenic meltdown (security was called) and the hallway was lined with patients in beds and chairs.
A nurse came and moved me again. I had no update on the second blood test but she took more blood for a third test. She reassured me I wasn’t going to the O.R. This time I was wheeled into a common room of hospital beds. Movable walls were pushed right up to my bed rails. I couldn’t see the other patients but I could hear them. One man was snoring loudly. The sweet man to my left was on oxygen (I could hear the pump) and coughing badly. I remember his French was so polite, beautiful and old, like from a different era. The frail elderly woman next to me was having complications from diabetes. He voice was like struggling bird wings. I heard a child screaming and the ongoing struggle with the patient having a mental breakdown. I quietly cried. “Je veux partir,” I practiced my pronunciation for the nurse. “Je veux partir. I want to leave.”
My bed was moved into progressively smaller spaces. I took a picture because I couldn’t believe it it was real and wanted evidence. Photo By Regina Sinsky-Crosby
It was late now. I had been in the hospital for six hours. My heart ached and my arms tingled. I felt nauseated and scared. Finally my second and third blood tests came back, negative for heart attack damage. A sweet nurse came in with some ibuprofen and my discharge instructions. “The doctor believes it is stress. Try not to be so stressed.” Very stressed and eager to leave I solemnly swore to be less stressed. After this experience I would happily go home and die there, merci.
I got up to dress in the small bathroom, the only place with privacy. That’s when I saw my roommates. I saw all the people in the hallway. Wearing a mask and still in pain I made my eyes as cheerful as I could. The French gentlemen to my left was having dinner. It actually smelled delicious. “Bon appétit, monsieur,” I smized, “ça va mieux j'espère.” I had practiced what I would say to him. He smiled with his fork and knife poised over the plate (real cutlery, real ceramic plate with real food, I took a snapshot with my mind). He gently bowed to me. “Merci madame, bonne soirée.”
As I walked out every patient that could wished me a bonne soirée and I wished them the same. French greeting culture continued even in the chaos if the hospital Emergency Department. Eye contact and little bows. Head nods and grunted bonne soirées. Despite the reality of my pain, of all of our pain, it felt like we had all been actors in a movie and this was the end credits. We were taking our bows.
Discharge took another hour. I sat in the waiting room waiting for “Madame Seen-ski” to be called (“Sinsky” is not an easy one for the French or any language, for that matter) and saw a mom rush in with a tiny newborn. The small part of the baby’s head I could see was purple. One woman literally crawled into the hospital, bent in pain. A man who appeared to be drunk was slumped in a chair with a hacking cough. An elderly woman dramatically groaned in her wheelchair, perking up and straightening her blankets and hair whenever her husband left the room to smoke (some very welcome comedy). A 20-something came in with her friend having a panic attack while who appeared to be their dates paced outside smoking with worried looks. And then a very large man came in with his wife and son. He was very clearly having a heart attack. His son and wife’s faces are etched in my mind. I prayed for him. All of them.
And then I paid with my credit card and walked home.
This was the start of my search for the reason my heart was aching. In the coming weeks and months I would find out why I had heart attack symptoms and I would use the powers of French healthcare to figure out my cure.