I feel ‘survivor’s guilt’ after lifelong pal fell to his death
Medic tells of trauma when ‘ambulance door suddenly flew open’
A PARAMEDIC has told how he feels survivor’s guilt after seeing a lifelong friend fall to his death out the side door of an ambulance.
PJ Cahill, 49, said the guilt ‘will always be there’, adding: ‘I don’t know if it will ever really go away’.
He was speaking after a court heard that his friend Simon Sexton died when the door from an ambul ance they were travelling in suddenly swung wide open, and he was thrown out, hitting the road and sustaining fatal head injuries.
Mr Cahill is suing the HSE and the German manufacturers of the ambulance, claiming he suffered psychological injuries, including depression, as a result of the trauma of the tragedy, which killed Mr Sexton, 43, in June 2010.
Mr Cahill had been driving the ambulance at speed from Cavan to Dublin when Mr Sexton got up to secure a side door. The court heard the door swung open, and Mr Sexton was thrown out. Mr Cahill saw his friend fall, from his side mirror, and tried in vain to resuscitate him.
The court heard he took an initial nine weeks off work, mourning his close friend and neighbour, a fatherof- six whom he had known since national school. On his return, the father-of three said the HSE did not offer him any counselling or debriefing in relation to the accident.
He then took a period of sick leave over the following Christmas. He said: ‘That first Christmas I felt so low, so nervous. I was still feeling unfriendly to people. I put that down to it being Christmas, and the Sexton family living so close, and our kids so young. I was looking at them, thinking it could have, should have, been me, not him, and it could have been my kids without a father.
‘I had flashbacks to before and after the accident. Everything kept coming i nto my mind over the Christmas period.
‘It was not a nice time for me, but I put it down, in my ignorance, to being part and parcel of what happened. I thought, I will be all right, I am not going to be one of these to let it beat me... I was going to do it all by myself. I did not need anybody to help me,’ he said.
He said he returned to work for financial reasons, as he needed his full salary. But he was not happy at work. He said it was, more or less ‘get in, get the job done, get out’. He took 16 weeks off between August and December 2011, as stressrelated leave. He said his wages were ‘cut to smithereens’ and that he had to return to work before Christmas that year ‘out of necessity’.
The following year, he said he was ‘annoyed’ not to have been given sick pay for a missed day, but was told by management that he had used up his allowance. He said he reminded them that former HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm had told him at Mr Sexton’s funeral that he just had to ask, and help would be given. Mr Cahill, from Stradone, Co. Cavan, broke down as he told the court: ‘This was the first time I had asked for help, and I was not given it.’
He said he consulted a solicitor about the sick pay issue, and it was only then that he realised the full toll the accident had taken.
He said: ‘I started to realise that something was not right here. That I was not where I should be. That I had tried, and was failing very badly,’ he said.
‘At that stage the accident was quite clear in my mind all the time.
‘Every time I went outside the door, every time I saw someone from the Sexton family. Survivor’s guilt was coming to the fore at that stage. Why did it happen? Why should I or anyone who belongs to me have to deal with it? It was never ending.’
As well as his allegations regarding failings in the HSE’s duty of care to him, it has also been alleged that the ambulance was unsafe.
The district court has previously fined the HSE €500,000 following the death of Mr Sexton.
During that case, it emerged the HSE was aware of safety defects in the side doors of the ambulance, which had rear hinges, but had done nothing to fix the problem.
The second defendant in the High Court case is Wietmarscher Ambulanz und Sonderfahrzeug GMBH.
The claims are denied by both defendants.
The case continues before Judge Raymond Fullam.
‘I tried and was failing very badly’