Sixty-year-old cancer patient Christian Nayet was being driven to hospital for a series of scheduled laboratory tests. But when Jean-Francois Pina, his assigned ambulance driver for that night complained of feeling pins and needles in his fingers after an hour on the road, he knew a reversal of roles had to be done, and quickly, to save the man's life.

Realising his paramedic driver was having a heart attack, he immediately ordered him, "Give me your keys, trust me. My life isn't in danger and yours is," Frenchman Mr Nayet, who has late-stage stomach cancer, told the Voix du Nord regional newspaper.

Immediately, Mr Nayet also administered a blood anticoagulant to Mr Pina to thin the driver's blood and stabilise his heart while diverting the ambulance that was supposed to bring him to a hospital in Lille instead to a nearby hospital in Lens.

While driving mad fast at breakneck speed to the hospital, the two men even managed to work in tandem.

"I couldn't find the siren, but I managed to turn the lights on and told him to put his arm out the window to signal to the cars to let us pass," the retired 60-year-old old who lives in the northern French town of Berck-sur-mer said.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Mr Nayet delivered his paramedic-driver-now-patient directly into the emergency room.

Doctors immediately worked on Mr Pina within 10 minutes of their arrival. While in the waiting room, Mr Nayet, on the other hand, was given morphine for his usual pain. He finally underwent his scheduled laboratory tests three hours later.

Frederic Allienne, one of the hospital's emergency workers, only have high praises for the cancer patient.

"The patient gave correct information, had the right reflexes, which allowed the driver to be treated quickly," Mr Allienne said. Without Mr Nayet's assistance, the driver "could have died."

But Mr Nayet just shrugged the media hype now describing him as courageous and labelling his act as heroic.

"I made a human gesture, without thinking, not a gesture of courage."

Mr Pina has recovered from the ordeal and had even phoned Mr Nayet the following day, thanking him profusely.

"I have a wife, a child and you saved me."

"He wanted to see me again," Mr Nayet said. "I told him: 'The most important thing is that you're OK. As for me, the night (I saved you) I slept like a baby - I knew I had done something good."

"I had chemo, two operations and I'm not really hopeful. My days are numbered, but morale is intact."

"Anyone would have done it," he said.