At the peak of Queensland's COVID-19 crisis in late January, Bethania couple Caroline and David Ingerson had to make a heartbreaking choice.
Should they say a final goodbye to their dying father in a COVID ward and risk contracting the virus; or stay away from him, so they could remain by the bedside of their seriously ill daughter for her final days?
They chose the latter.
Eighty-nine-year-old Keith Briese, Toowoomba born and bred, and a former resident of aged care facility Jeta Gardens, died in Ward 2G of the Logan Hospital on January 29.
At the same time, his daughter Caroline and son-in-law David were in Ward 2H, making palliative care arrangements for their 18-year-old daughter, Tara.
She died at home less than three weeks later.
"I don't think I've had a chance to grieve for my father yet, because I'm so consumed with my daughter," Ms Ingerson said through tears.
"He was basically just down the hallway — so close. But I just couldn't. The only saving grace was that my sister could be with him."
'The hardest thing I've ever had to do'
The Ingersons' world has felt very empty since the loss of their daughter and father.
Their lives were so consumed by caring for Tara, that even a recent getaway — their first in years — caused guilt and grief.
"It's been difficult. It's been very empty," Ms Ingerson said.
Sympathy cards, photos of Tara and her brother Mark, 28, as well as Tara's recently acquired graduation medal adorn the top of a sideboard.
A teardrop-shaped urn containing the teenager's ashes is decorated with her favourite things — purple butterflies.
It sits pride of place among the fairyland of tiny ornaments and decorations that Tara collected and curated for years in a glass cabinet just inside the front door.
A 'heavily broken' system
While 2022 will forever be marred by personal tragedy, the Ingersons will also remember it as the year their faith in the aged care and health systems was shattered.
Under the pressure of COVID, they watched both systems crumble before their eyes.
"When the government said, 'Oh, they are coping', they weren't. When you were there and seeing on a day-to-day basis what was happening in the hospitals, they were not coping — they were drowning," Ms Ingerson said.
"They [medical staff] were doing the best they could, but the reality was, they weren't winning," Mr Ingerson added.
"We saw a number of staff that were working absolutely crazy hours, doing absolutely the best they could, but with a system that was heavily broken, there was going to be no fix."
The couple said chronic staff shortages, coupled with an increase in demand for care was a recipe for disaster.
They said they saw many contract nurses trying to work in areas and facilities they had never been in before.
"There were going to be a lot of casualties from that — I believe Tara was one of them," Mr Ingerson said.
Surgery put off due to COVID
Tara, the strong-willed and mischievous captain of Beenleigh Special School in 2021, was born without a corpus callosum — the band of nerve fibres connecting the two hemispheres of the brain.
But it was the degenerative neurological disorder demyelinating polyneuropathy, diagnosed in 2019, that was her biggest battle.
By the end of last year, Tara had lost control of using a walker and her bowels were not functioning as they should.
"She was always smiling and happy. She hardly ever cried. You knew something was really wrong if she cried," Ms Ingerson said.
Until they enlisted a young nurse as a companion and carer for Tara, the Ingersons were trying to manage around-the-clock care for their daughter on their own.
"Caroline would work through from the early morning through the day and then in the evenings, I'd take over the shifts. We had medicines that were running all the time," he said.
Tara's condition deteriorated rapidly in January but the Ingersons believe their daughter may have lived longer had she received timely surgery.
Instead, meetings with a surgical team that were scheduled for December were postponed when one specialist contracted COVID.
"She was due to have surgery but that kept getting put off due to COVID, then when we finally got that appointment they said, 'Look I don't think that surgery we were planning is suitable for Tara anymore — we have to rethink everything'," Ms Ingerson said.
'I thought we had more time'
By early January, scores of COVID patients were being treated in hospitals, while hundreds of people were queuing for hours at testing facilities.
So far, 868 people have died of COVID in Queensland.
It was in the midst of this crisis that the Ingersons desperately needed robust and reliable health and aged care systems.
In early January, they had to wait with ambulance crews in the car park of the Mater Hospital from midnight to 3:30am before Tara, who was gravely ill, could be admitted.
Tara was having trouble breathing and her resting heart rate had spiked to 140 beats per minute. Blood tests and a COVID swab were taken as she lay on an ambulance stretcher.
Once inside the Mater, the Ingersons said staff were keen to send them home as there was a great concern Tara would contract COVID.
After taking new medication home, they said they were back in an ambulance 24 hours later and this time, taken to the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital (QEII) in Coopers Plains because both the Mater and Logan hospitals were full.
Mrs Ingerson said she wore PPE so she could monitor her daughter as nursing staff were so busy, but a new problem soon emerged.
Tara, who had turned 18 just months earlier in September and was small for her age, was now stuck in limbo between child and adult health services.
"She was in an adult ward but they couldn't look after her because she needed paediatric-sized things," Mr Ingerson said.
Queensland Health maintains paediatric care is available at all of its hospitals.
After returning home again, the Ingersons said a team of doctors at Logan Hospital who had previously looked after Tara, reached out and arranged a bed for her immediately after being shocked by her condition during a telehealth appointment.
"We're pretty sure a couple of the doctors went out on a limb and certainly caused some trouble to get things pushed forward and happen because they were so concerned that things were taking so long to happen," Mr Ingerson said.
It was during Tara's stay at Logan Hospital the family realised they had to prepare to say goodbye much sooner than they expected.
"I knew time was precious but … I thought we had more time. It came on very quickly," Ms Ingerson recalled.
'Plans to manage COVID impact'
Queensland Health was unable to comment on Tara's case or her quality of care but issued a statement describing the loss of life as "tragic", offering condolences to families, and reminding Queenslanders they receive "world-class, free, public healthcare — despite increasing demand".
"Throughout the pandemic, all jurisdictions have taken responsible measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 among hospital staff and patients.
"This includes furloughing of staff, as a staff member with COVID-19 poses a health risk to patients, particularly those who are immunocompromised."
The spokesperson said all Queensland hospitals had plans to manage the impact of COVID including "prioritising urgent care, postponing non-urgent elective surgery, increasing the use of Telehealth, and delivering care in other settings".
'Sorry, did no-one tell you your dad has got COVID?'
As the couple started making plans to bring their daughter home for the last time, Ms Ingerson believed her father Keith Briese to be healthy, spending much of his days in bed in the dementia wing of Bethania's Jeta Gardens facility.
Mr Briese had a slowly progressing dementia, after being diagnosed 20 years earlier.
"He still knew who we were, but he was a lot sleepier than he used to be," Ms Ingerson said.
"He always had this thing ... he wanted to be in his 90s and he was going to do everything he possibly could to get there."
Ms Ingerson said her father was also believed to have another underlying condition, possibly cancer, which he refused to be tested for.
As far as she knew, he was fully vaccinated.
"We signed the forms. We know that he definitely got one, but with all of the lockdowns and things we just made the assumption about the other. He hadn't had the booster, of course," she said.
Ms Ingerson last saw her father on January 2, before the facility imposed a COVID lockdown. Although she was still in touch by phone.
The family had previously been happy with the care offered by the facility as both of Mr Ingerson's parents had lived out their days there.
"We sort of noticed things being not so good at the end of last year when the lockdowns were starting, because you weren't allowed to be there and when you were, you weren't allowed to be there for long — so you weren't actually seeing what you were seeing before," Ms Ingerson said.
"I didn't know the staff anymore — all that sort of thing."
In late January, Ms Ingerson got a call from staff at Jeta Gardens saying they had called an ambulance for her father.
"I said — 'What's happened?' They said his oxygen is quite low so we're going to get some more oxygen into him," Ms Ingerson said.
"They didn't tell me he had COVID at first. It wasn't until I said, why does he need oxygen? Then it was, 'Sorry, did no-one tell you your dad has got COVID?' and I said, 'No'."
Ms Ingerson said she knew there had been a COVID outbreak at the centre, but believed it was isolated to another building.
"The notifications we got from them were very general and with very little information. You'd get a full page come through but it really didn't say anything. It was so vague on everything," Mr Ingerson said.
Mr Briese managed to recover from that episode without having to go to hospital, but a couple of days later, there was another urgent phone call from Jeta Gardens.
"They said, 'Your dad is not well again. We've called an ambulance but we're just warning you now, he won't come back, he's that ill'," Ms Ingerson said.
Mr Briese died the following morning.
More than 90 residents and 80 staff at Jeta Gardens were infected with COVID in early 2022. Sixteen people died.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the centre said the Jeta Gardens community had "experienced and learned a lot to date" and that it was still "in the process of recovering from the COVID outbreak and recent flood event," but was "happy and healthy" once again.
The centre confirmed COVID had caused staff shortages earlier this year, forcing some workers to attend extra shifts, do double shifts or stay in "on-site accommodation to ensure residents continued to be cared for".
A Jeta Gardens spokesperson also confirmed changes were taking place within the centre, including staff training and preparedness planning.
Tara's final wish
The Ingersons are trying to come to terms with their horrific start to the year, they are glad that their daughter Tara could have a final wish granted in the last days of her life.
She loved the music from the movie Frozen and wanted to see the stage production that was beginning at QPAC.
While her palliative care team warned against it, her parents felt they had nothing to lose.
"When we told her about it in the hospital, she nodded," Ms Ingerson said.
Then, two days before the performance, with her health rapidly failing, Tara was again asked whether she still wanted to go to the show.
"She had her eyes open then and she blinked. One blink for yes," Ms Ingerson said.
On the way in, Ms Ingerson had to hold her daughter's head up as her vital signs crashed. Mr Ingerson cried as he remembered how Tara's nurse had to do manual compressions to keep her breathing.
The team at QPAC had arranged ushers who were paramedics and a room nearby should they need it — but they did not.
"We thought if we got 10 minutes we would be happy, but no, she made it through the whole thing," Ms Ingerson said.
Tara even managed to open her eyes for her favourite song, Let It Go.
The next night, Valentine's Day, Tara's condition plummeted and loved ones gathered to say goodbye.
Four days later, Tara finally let go too.
