Mobile phone saved farmer’s life

A farmer has told how he owes his life to his mobile phone after his leg and ear were severed in a horrific accident.

Paddy Kennedy said he made a few failed attempts to use his blood-soaked phone before eventually getting through to his neighbour and then to his local doctor to get an ambulance to his yard after the bucket of a farm loader landed on him.

Tonight’s episode of Ear to the Ground on RTÉ One reveals that farming is Ireland’s deadliest occupation, with 200 people killed on a farm over the last decade and many more injured.

The Carlow father said he immediately realised he was in a grave situation when he came to after being knocked unconscious as the loader had taken his ear off and gone through his leg.

Mr Kennedy said: “I heard a bang and the bucket came down sideways and went through the leg. I rose up my leg and the boot stayed on the ground, I knew I was in serious bother. My first reaction was shouting.

“I thought I’d never pull myself up to the road and I thought of the iPhone. I wasn’t able to swipe the phone open with the blood on the screen. I kept at it and at it and eventually it swiped.

“I had Dr Byrne’s mobile number and I rang him. I said, ‘Doctor I’m in serious bother in the bottom yard at home and the bucket of the loader has gone though my leg. Get an ambulance through to me straight away.’

“I wouldn’t be here today only for I had the mobile phone and it was the luck of God I was able to use it.”

He said he believed the speed of the reaction to his call for help saved his life as the emergency services had him in the ambulance on the way to hospital within an hour.

“They were working on me and putting me into a splint. I was in good form. I actually had no real pain. It was a dizziness in the leg and a shock,” he said.

“Then I was on a stretcher and into the ambulance. We left the yard exactly an hour after it happened and on the way to Waterford.”

Doctors told him it was one of the worst injuries they had seen, with just a few inches of skin joining his leg between his knee and his ankle.

Mr Kennedy, 40, went into surgery for three hours to try to reattach his leg but it proved unsuccessful and he was told he could stay in hospital for two years and endure painful skin-grafting procedures every two weeks to help heal his leg or opt for amputation.

Mr Kennedy was back working his land within two months of the accident and said he knew instinctively there was no hope for his leg. “I knew it was going. I knew the leg was gone.

“The [doctor] said, ‘Paddy, you’re making the right decision. You’ll be back out farming in August.’

“I beat him to that. I was back out farming in July. They sewed my ear back on. It was hanging off but they did a good job and it’s working perfectly again.”

He said he immediately felt stronger when he arrived home to his farm in Borris, Co Carlow, after five weeks in hospital.

* Ear to the Ground airs at 8.30pm.