In the Langres emergency room, the evacuation of Benjamin Thiers to the Dijon University Hospital was completed in two hours. But he waited for his transfer. If he survived a heart attack, his heart suffered. He would like to see the Langroi establishment closed, as it was too “dangerous”.
On the night of Thursday January 26 to Friday January 27, Benjamin Thiers, who lives in Vivey, is seized with chest pains, which radiate into his left arm. At the request of the SAMU, an ambulance transported him to the emergency room of the Langres hospital. The 40-year-old arrived there at 4:18 a.m. in a medical ambulance. Benjamin has never had a heart attack, he has a healthy life. “The pain would come back when I walked.” In the emergency room, we point to “a slight anomaly” on the electrocardiogram”. At 5:47 am, his troponin level is 358 ng/l. “…and the pain was back.” We’re not doing a heart ultrasound. At 6:30 a.m., the decision to evacuate him to CHU of Dijon is stopped. Except that “the SAMU was already busy, no ambulance could take care of my transport”. There is the helicopter… but the weather conditions prevent it from flying.
“But you are alive! »
“I was left in a room, door closed, all morning”. Aspirin, Lovenox are administered to Benjamin, who also has a vague memory of a spray – he thinks he may have been given Natispray. The device monitoring his heart jams, letting out a shrill beep. The heartbeat curve flattens out like a pancake. “He beeped for five minutes without anyone coming.” It is a doctor who will notice it, pointing out in an impulsive tone that Benjamin is alive when the device signals the contrary. At 11:49 a.m., his troponin level reached 2,583 ng/l. “I called several times. I’ve always been told: it’s Chaumont that’s lagging behind”. Benjamin thinks he sees the end of this eternity. “They put me on a stretcher… where I stayed for three quarters of an hour”. Alas, it’s a false start: in the end, “Chaumont (still) isn’t ready yet”. Benjamin is finally evacuated around 1:30 p.m. At 1:58 p.m., he was registered at the Dijon University Hospital. His troponin level rose to 17,000 ng/l. An hour later, he is in the operating room. The surgeon places a single stent in her, her heart has struggled too much to place two or even three more. “At the end of the procedure, the troponin level is at 40,000”. The surgeon regrets not having been able to intervene during the night. “So I would have done it all at once,” he told the patient. For now, Benjamin is more than angry. “With these eight hours of waiting before my redirection to Dijon, my heart has scars because a whole part has not been irrigated. Four of the 17 segments were hypokinesis. I have a medicine for the muscle scars”. The 40-year-old is on forced rest until March 17. “Afterwards, a therapeutic half-time will no doubt be considered”. Knowing that it will therefore also be necessary to program the placement of the other stents. “And yet, I am young. How would an old man’s heart have resisted? “.
“It’s normal for your companion to be in pain”
“I went back to the emergency room in Langres the following Tuesday. I heard a strange noise in my wrist, at the level of the passage borrowed to place the stent”. It is 3 am when Benjamin arrives again at the emergency room of the local hospital, he fears a “blast in the artery”. His companion overhears a conversation between two nursing staff: “it is normal that he is in pain”. And points out that “no nurse takes a stethoscope”. Ni “gets closer to Dijon to find out about his patient history”. A blood sample is taken. The emergency doctor will take 1h30 to arrive. On the other hand, if Benjamin, who says he had a heart attack three days earlier, hears himself being scolded by a radiologist – “I don’t care about this heart attack” – tie will be taken with the CHU. “We must practice a Doppler”: the CHU wants to rule out the risk of fistula or aneurysm. The angiology examination will also take its time to be carried out -Benjamin understands that we had to wait for the dedicated specialist.
Now it’s Dijon direct
“I am the first to want to see a dangerous hospital closed”. If the experience of a heart attack is naturally traumatic, Benjamin has also reaped the effects of a feeling of “inertia in the face of urgency”. His companion remains appalled to have heard nurses tell him “we can do nothing more than wait for Chaumont”. She is also so shaken that she wonders if, in the event of a recurrence, she will not take the risk of driving her companion to the CHU herself, where he was immediately surrounded. Especially since, for his part, Benjamin is unable to consider a new passage through the Langres hospital box.
“We must pierce the abscess”
“I am ready to meet this patient to identify the difficulties, and improve ourselves”. Don’t count on emergency department boss Dr. Vincent Escudier to push problems under the rug. If he needs to see his file to get an idea of this particular care, Dr. Escudier confirms that, among other things – there are “a lot of ambulance problems”. Before insisting: “I’m not trying to defuse, you have to pierce the abscess to find out what happened”. And he invites the patient to make “a request for expertise”.
Fabienne Ausserre
