Queensland Ambulance Service paramedic Mick Mahoney back at work after having leg amputated
Nine months after he was forced to have his leg amputated after it was badly injured in a farm accident, Queensland Ambulance Service paramedic Mick Mahoney is not only back at work, he has been cleared to return to the frontline.
QLD News
Don't miss out on the headlines from QLD News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Laying in a hospital bed earlier this year with a badly mangled foot, Beaudesert ambulance station officer-in-charge Mick Mahoney had only one question before making the life-changing decision to have the limb amputated.
“Can I still be a paramedic if I’m missing a leg?” he asked Queensland Ambulance Service medical director Dr Steve Rashford.
Dr Rashford put his mind at ease: “Of course you can, you idiot, of course you can.”
Nine months after a buggy accident on his property left him seriously injured, Mr Mahoney is not only back at work, but has just been cleared to return to frontline duties.
It’s a testament not just to his own toughness, but to the support of his ‘other family’ – his workmates – including a guardian angel colleague who held his hand and comforted him on the way to hospital.
The accident happened in January when Mr Mahoney, a 20-year QAS veteran, was taking his daughters Elyse, 9, and Annabelle, 6, down to see the rain-swollen river on his property.
“We’d done that a thousand times, probably more, but the buggy tipped over and my foot was caught underneath it,” he recalled.
While his daughters thankfully escaped unscathed, Mr Mahoney’s foot was ‘pretty messed up’.
“I phoned a friend of mine and he came over. I wanted him to drive me to the hospital and he said ‘no, we better call an ambulance’,” he said with a wry chuckle.
Mr Mahoney had about 10 operations at Brisbane’s PA Hospital to try to save his foot before resolving to have it amputated.
His reassuring phone chat with Dr Rashford helped him reconcile the radical decision rather than endure more surgery, with no guarantees of success.
“If Steve had said no, I don’t know what decision I would have made, to be honest,” he said.
“When you’re a paramedic, you lose your identity to a degree. If you ask a paramedic to draw a picture of themselves, they’d probably draw a picture of themselves in a uniform or near an ambulance.
“You spend so much time at work … it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. I’ve been around for a while now and I could never see myself doing anything else.
“When you get down to tin tacks, there’s a real satisfaction to what we do. It’s a very privileged position we hold within the community.”
Mr Mahoney – who made an incredible return to work in June, four months after the amputation – said he can ‘never repay’ his colleagues who visited him in hospital, mowed his lawns, cleaned his house and cooked for him while he was recovering.
He has a special bond with Emma Hooper, the advanced care paramedic who was first on the scene of the accident and held his hand on the way to hospital.
“It’s just like with any patient but I suppose you do go that extra mile for one of your own,” she said.
“We didn't know the extent of it and had no idea he would have lost his leg. We didn’t expect him to be back this soon, but he’s a bit of a fighter.”