On Sunday 15 March 2015, Eileen O’Driscoll and her husband Padraig were planning an evening away from their farm at Coolbawn east, Caheragh, Co Cork. They were going to attend a dance at the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway that evening. In 2006 they had converted their farm from dairy to sucklers. After having the vet out to a calving earlier that week, they thought it would make sense to bring the cows in before they left. Unfortunately, there would be no dance that night. The unpredictability of cows nearing calving struck home.

“It happened so fast, I was on the ground before I realised it. Next thing Padraig came running towards me and told me to get up, and I said I can’t move. When she hit me, my glasses went and I couldn’t see,” Eileen explains.

“Eileen called me. By the time I got to her, she was on the ground and there was a herd of cows on top of her. I remember the colour of her hair, it was like the rainbow, red blood, green grass, brown soil,” continues Padraig.

“I had to fight off the cows with a stick in one hand and roll Eileen down the field with the other. Any damage the cows didn’t do I managed to do, but the medics told me after it was the lesser of two evils. I dragged her behind a wire and a furze bush. The fire was up with the cows. I knew she needed medical attention and standing there all day wasn’t going to get it.”

The field was 500m from the house and neither had their mobile phone on them. Padraig ran back to ring the emergency services. Eileen recalls little of the time immediately after the attack: “While he was away I was trying to move and I couldn’t. Next thing I felt my face swelling and the blood came into my mouth. I thought I’m in trouble here, and the cold, the cold will never leave my bones.

“The medic kept saying on a scale of one to 10 how was I? Padraig said I kept saying 10.”

It wasn’t straightforward for Padraig after dialing 999.

“I got into an argument because the person on the other end of the phone couldn’t find Coolbawn on the map.

“Now to be fair, it turned out there were two spellings of the townland and that was the problem. I tried to explain that, as the ambulance would be local they would know where to go,” says Padraig.

“If that was today we’d have the eircode and they’d be here straight away. The ambulance was able to come up the farm road.

“The medics and all the entourage that followed were fantastic. We had off-duty ambulance personnel, the coastguard, a helicopter, the gardai and neighbours. There was quite a crowd there, all willing to help.”

Eileen O'Driscoll.

Hospital stay

Eileen was airlifted to Cork University Hospital. She sustained multiple injuries, namely 10 fractured ribs, flail chest which damaged a lung, and fractures to three vertebrae. Remaining in hospital for nine days after the attack, Eileen was discharged, but found herself hospitalised two weeks later. As predicted, she developed pneumonia.

“There was lung damage and they told us to be ready for that.”

She was completely incapacitated for four months and required two people to look after her. As an active woman who runs the four-star Coolbawn Lodge B&B, this was a complete culture shock.

Padraig gave up his job and Eileen’s sister, who is a nurse, did the same. Eileen found nights to be the worst.

“Wanting to call them and hating to call them. I couldn’t do a thing. The hardest part for me was waiting for someone to come, to take me out of bed or put me into bed.”

After a while she began to use the laptop and had to cancel bookings and explain her story to holiday makers who had booked in. Out of the blue, Eileen also received a call from the producers of the popular TV programme Daniel And Majella’s B&B Road Trip to see if she would be interested in taking part. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right.

THE Future

These days Eileen stays clear of the cows unless they are housed for winter. She misses that interaction.

“I used to love walking through the cattle or moving the fencer for them, I miss the freedom of that. I miss the magic of it now that I can’t do it. It’s a sadness that having an injury leaves you with.

“Looking back, I was out twice with those cows that morning. Completely on my own, unaware that anything like that could ever happen. I was the one preaching health and safety and I got caught. I thought I wouldn’t, but I was caught 100%.

“You always think it won’t happen to you, it will happen to someone else and now I look back and think, how could I have been so foolish.”

Padraig is strict on culling cows with bad temperament, but this case was complicated.

“We don’t know which cow did it, she could still be there for all we know because by the time I got there all the cows were around her.”

Eileen looks back positively on the experience.

“Sometimes I think it was wonderful it happened because it gave me such an appreciation of people, their kindness and goodwill. I probably took it all for granted and now I’ve a whole new appreciation of life. We were so busy and all of a sudden everything stopped. There were three jobs gone because of it.”

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