Alain, the recluse from the Saint-Jacques district of Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales), is doing as well as possible after being evacuated from his home which has become a prison.
This 52-year-old man, victim of extreme obesity (he would weigh between 250 and 300 kg) had been immobilized on the first floor of the dilapidated family home for more than two years.
He remained thus, semi-lying, night and day, without being able to extract himself from this trap served by a narrow and vertiginous staircase.
After a spectacular four-hour long rescue, but completely successful this Tuesday, December 1 in the morning, Alain arrived at the beginning of the afternoon at the right destination at Saint-Eloi hospital in Montpellier (Hérault).
A relief also for the forty people involved in this unprecedented operation in France.
At 11 am, after an impressive flight above the roofs, tossed at the end of the cables, the rescue container was positioned in the rue du Moulin-Parès.
Half an hour later, Alain was installed in the special stretcher and then in the SMUR 34 ambulance.
Three hours earlier, the masons of a company expert in difficult situations had removed the window with some of its cardboard tiles.
Then, they had opened a large breach in the front of the house.
The container then came to stick against this opening so that Alain could be installed smoothly in this improvised elevator shaft suspended from a crane, to descend one floor to the level of the roadway.
“When the patient left the room, the container pitched strongly for a few seconds, despite the ropes stretched from the street by the firefighters.
This was really impressing.
Then the container stabilized and it came down very slowly, ”said a neighbor whose window overlooks the theater of operations.
"He was crying with joy when he arrived in Montpellier"
"For us the most delicate, it was when it was necessary to handle the patient, to lift him gently in the room then, downstairs, to position him on the special stretcher and in the ambulance" continues Commander Aurélien Paris des sapeurs - SDIS 66 firefighters (departmental fire and rescue service).
“The patient helped us a lot during this operation.
We made sure to reassure him, because he was very anxious.
Sedatives were necessary ”, explained for his part Dr. Laurent Ortega of Samu 66.
“During a first attempt to evacuate him in the fall of 2019, he categorically refused, mainly because of the risks.
There he clearly understood that we were all there to help him.
He was crying with joy when he arrived in Montpellier, ”noted Prof. Mustapha Sebbane who heads SMUR 34 (mobile emergency and resuscitation service).
An operation with "very real risks"
"I believe he did not sleep the night before because he was overcome by anxiety, because the operation mounted by the authorities to evacuate him involved very real risks", says Me. Jean Codognès, Alain's lawyer.
It was he who brought the matter to the public.
It took five months of hype and litigation, including complaints filed with the prosecutor on behalf of his client and the Obesity League.
Locked in at home for months, Alain, 52, “will sleep in a real bed” for the first time in “so long”, says his lawyer.
/ LP / Christian Goutorbe
“This Tuesday evening, for the first time in so long, Alain will sleep in a real bed and he will be treated.
For him, it's a new life that begins.
He knows that he will not come back to live in this house, that of happy family days with his parents who have now disappeared, ”says Jean Codognès.
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The establishment of the health bulletin of Alain, in a state of morbid obesity, will take weeks and months of care.
One day, this true survivor of an absolute sanitary ordeal may be able to walk again.
And relive.
