On Sunday, September 8 at 7:30 am I made a heart attack. I asked Marie-Lou, my sister-in-law, to call the SAMU, an emergency service, without answer she drove me to the Urgencies of the hospital in Draguignan at the speed of a high-speed train, full-headlight, hazard lights and jumping traffic lights. Taken in charge of the my arrival perfused and under oxygen I passed a scanner then the diagnosis fell: I had made a myocardial infarction and I was in cardiac failure. The A&E doctor decided to transfer me by an ambulance provided with health care to the hospital of Fréjus where I arrived around 11:30 am. I was lucky that the duty cardiologist was that who had made me a coronarography in 2012. In operating room before sinking in unconsciousness I intended it to tell me: “Do not have any worry I am familiar with your case, all will happen well.”
I learned later that he had practiced a coronarography and an angioplastie to emerge an artery and to pose a coronary active stent. When I woke up in the room of the service of the intensive care I discovered my brother and my sister-in-law at the bottom of bed. After the words of comfort my brother pointed out me that the destruction of my MAN truck in Mexico was a happy event. I was in France and not in a lost country in Central America. I remained in intensive care until September 17th to be transferred to a cardiology Center of La Chenevière at Callian. During my stay at the hospital of Fréjus I was in a vegetative state, a vegetable, incompetent to become aware of what arrived to me. In La Chenevière I kept the room during two days, too weak to go to the restaurant room. Then under control of the cardiologists I began my cardiac re-education. I must say that the medical team is in all remarkable points.
“… The characteristic of a man is to live and not to exist…” On the road by Jack Kerouac.
In the back-country of the department of Var I spent a pleasant stay favorable with the reflection to consider the continuation after these events. My heart disease had caused a fundamental change in my life: I had a past of traveller around the world since my retirement in 2005, now I have a present of handicapped by cardiac failure and I should rebuild me a future. The most constraining consequence was that I could not probably any more go up to more than 2,000 meters of altitude on foot or in vehicle. I will not go back to Mexico and I will not go in Central America or in the Andean countries of South America before several months even never. Perhaps that I will not see again Machu Picchu and that I will not see Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
“… Journeying seems to me an advantageous exercise. The spirit has a continual activity there to notice the unknown and new things, and I do not know a better school to form the life to unceasingly put in front of our eyes diversity of so much of other lives, opinions and uses…” Diary of journey by Michel de Montaigne who was the first writer-traveller in French language.
I must keep travelling, but I should do it differently. Very quickly under the impulse of the cardiologists and my brother of whom I reminded one's fill that I wanted to go again on a journey around the world. I decided to continue it not in uninterrupted but in split with returns to France to have care. My new truck had been put in stand-by during my obliged absence. Its manufacturing began on October 21st for a delivery from December 2nd. Moreover I looked at a single-storey small villa to be bought in Draguignan or in the surroundings to be close to my brother and my sister-in-law. It will be my new base camp. Year 2014 will spend in France and in Europe to leave time to cardiac necrose to regenerate itself, if possible. The surface occupied by residual necrosis will determine my ability to travel and to go in altitude. I will make this time profitable to test my new vehicle, at low altitude.
