With her mother Debbie in palliative care as a result of a prolonged battle with cancer, former Savernake resident now Mooroopna paramedic Chloe Bruce, has struggled for five weeks to obtain a border permit to travel to Wagga Wagga to be by her mother’s side.
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The frontline worker has desperately tried to apply for a compassionate exemption to cross the border to no avail.
Out of “frustration, sheer desperation and despair” Ms Bruce wrote a letter pleading with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to allow her to visit her mother.
“I first placed an application for a compassionate exemption to the VIC and NSW border closure on the first of August, 2020,” Ms Bruce said.
“This application included a comprehensive plan for self-isolation and travel, including a letter from mum’s oncologist with her diagnosis.”
Ms Bruce said she was informed that the decision would be made within a week of the application.
“I waited nine days and then called ServiceNSW and requested an update, at this point I was told I had to wait another twenty-four hours as it had not been seven business days.
“I waited another forty-eight hours until I called to request another update, at which point I was told I had to escalate the request after my mother took a turn for the worse.”
Ms Bruce said she escalated the request and received a reply within twenty-four hours but was informed that despite the NSW border team doctor contacting her mother’s head oncologist and then contacting her mother’s palliative care team (without the family’s permission), they had deemed that there was not enough evidence to progress the application.
“I was informed that I had to get another doctor’s letter to state my mother’s current health and then contact the local health district to discuss any further restrictions that will have to be in place if the exemption was granted.
“It was said mum’s case was deemed not dire enough.”
Ms Bruce said there are so many frustrating issues with the process none more so than the length of time it takes to consider the application, especially when someone is terminally ill.
“I cannot describe how upset, angry and frustrated I’ve been and still remain for others who are going through the same thing. It has been such a horrible process,” Ms Bruce said.
“It really is just a ridiculous process but applying for compassionate consideration to go and see my unwell mother is a decision that I do not undertake lightly.”
Working as a full-time paramedic Ms Bruce has had to juggle work and visiting her mother.
Up until July 8 she had been working a full-time roster and then on her days off she would travel to Wagga Wagga to provide assistance to her family and mother during her illness.
“Since the eighth of July I have not been able to cross the border to visit my mother or to provide assistance to my father or brother.
“During this time my father (Trevor Bruce) has been working full-time, maintaining a home and trying to provide for the family while mum has been unwell.
“We are a very close-knit family who rely heavily on each other for support but have been unable to.
“We always try to spend time together but especially with our situation at the moment we want to be able to spend as much time together as we can.
“I have not applied for a border exemption until now as I wanted to make sure that a reasonable amount of time had passed before I tried to go home again, so as not to overload the system when I had only recently been home.
“Unfortunately on Thursday, August 27 mum took a turn for the worst, and I supplied all the correct documentation to ServiceNSW to update my application, then was told I had to supply more documentation and sit on the Victorian side of the border until last Monday, waiting for a reply.
“One of the reasons that you can apply for an exemption under compassionate grounds, is if the person has ‘days to live’, currently based on the timeline to reply to the exemption, if someone had days to live, applying for an exemption would not be of any assistance, as the exemption takes much longer than ‘days’ to be processed, in this time the person would have passed away.”
Ms Bruce said working in the emergency services as a paramedic she knows too well of the risk of transmission of the COVID 19 virus to different localities and also to the vulnerable population.
“I completely understand the reasoning and rationale behind why the border has been closed, and I do not dispute this. After all, the border closure is in place to protect the NSW population, including my family,” Ms Bruce said.
“I also do not dispute the rationale for needing a border crossing permit as I do believe that people will maliciously disobey the border closure. What I do not understand is when an application and appropriate corresponding documentation has been supplied, and then been corroborated by multiple medical professionals; why the exemption cannot be granted.
“I have been working in this pandemic, along with my colleagues for months now, and I don’t believe this will change anytime soon. My family is my mental and emotional support.
“The only reason that I am separated from them is so that I can provide healthcare support to another community in their time of need.
“I have been working constantly to try and provide support to these people and the only thing that I hoped for, was to see my critically unwell mother. To be able to spend quality time with her, hopefully while I still can.”
Thirty-three days after first trying, Chloe finally got an exemption last Wednesday and was able to go and visit her mum on Saturday.
“‘Luckily’ for me Mum has rallied so I finally got the opportunity to see her,” Ms Bruce said.
“The support from mum’s doctors, oncologists and just general medical team has been great.
“In times of stress we are told that human connection and interpersonal relationships are the most important thing to reduce our feelings of isolation, depression and anxiety.
“Working in the emergency services is a dynamic and intense environment every day, resulting in my personal resilience being affected. This becomes an issue when my primary way of increasing my resilience is by staying connected and visiting my family regularly.
“You just can’t have people separated by a point on the map.
“We’ve finally got to where we need to be but so many people have reached out to me after my Facebook post and said the same thing has happened to them.
“This is just another example of how detrimental this exemption process is.”
Journalist