Opinion: As a parent of a medically fragile child, I feel betrayed by the lifting of restrictions
The excessive, guilt-induced pile of presents spills out from under my Christmas tree. My two young daughters go off to bed each night counting down the days to when they can open them. And once they are asleep, my husband and I scour the internet, searching for peer-reviewed studies of COVID-19, weighing up risks and benefits in strained, tired voices., invitations dangle before us. But our six-year-old medically fragile daughter is still not eligible for a vaccine.
Throughout this pandemic we have remained hopeful that once vaccinated, our daughter’s risk will be lower and that with her cardiologist’s sign-off, she can live a full life again. But we feel thoroughly betrayed that before we could protect our most vulnerable family member, the NSW government decided to lift restrictions,My husband and I have become “frequent flyers” of the children’s hospital since our daughter was born. She has a habit of coming down with something at 5.
In that time I have lost my accreditation as a teacher, because of my extended absence from the profession. My husband and I have become solely responsible for educating and socialising our children. And we have had to organise all of our eldest’s therapy sessions via telehealth, which are frustrating when your child struggles to see or hear.Our children have suffered the most.
Unfortunately, he found clinics still only offered spots for over 12s. Undeterred, he checked back an hour later, then again at 3am, only to find the booking site now said “check back in the coming weeks”. We have no idea when we will be able to book. From our frantic ringing of clinics and doctors, it seems they are none the wiser too.
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