Cancer patient saves ambulance driver's life

A French cancer sufferer saved his ambulance driver by taking the wheel of the vehicle and driving him to hospital when he suffered a heart attack. Christian Nayet, who usually lives in Britain but was staying with his parents in northern France, says his gesture was “human … not courageous”.

Open access/haitham alfalah

Nayet, 60, was is staying with his parents, who are in their 80s, while he receives treatment for cancer in France.

“It was the last chance scan,” he says of his appointment at a hospital in Lille last week. “They’ve cut out my stomach but the disease has spread to my liver. I’ve had chemo and two operations and there isn’t really much help. My days are numbered by morale is intact.”

An ambulance was sent to fetch him in Berck on the Channel coast but after an hour on the road the driver complained of tingling in his fingers and Nayet realised that he was having a heart attack.

“I said, ‘Give me your keys, trust me. My life isn’t in danger and yours is,’ ” he told the Voix du Nord regional paper.

Nayet took the wheel and put on the flashing lights but was unable to start the siren, which did not prevent him driving to a hospital in nearby Lens at breakneck speed.

There doctors operated on the ambulance driver, while Nayet was left in the waiting room but given morphine for the pain he habitually suffers.

He was given his scan three hours later.

On Wednesday after the story appeared in the Voix du Nord, Nayet was inundated by calls from national media keen to tell all France of his escapade.

“It probably makes a nice change from the Cahuzac affair,” he declared laconically.

Nayet, who has had a series of jobs but now devotes his time to painting and reading, had been living in Britain but returned to France for treatment, staying with his parents.

On Wednesday afternoon, after turning down an offer to travel to Paris for a live TV appearance, he switched off his mobile and went to an art exhibition in Lille with his son.

"I made a human gesture, without thinking, not a gesture of courage," he told the Voix du Nord.