Injured animals find sanctuary

01/12/2007

A NORTHUMBERLAND woman who was forced to close her wildlife sanctuary when she was diagnosed with breast cancer has battled back to fitness and is now welcoming injured animals again.

At Christmas 2005 Lisa Bolton, now 74, discovered she had the disease and was unable to take patients at her Wildlife in Need sanctuary in Chatton as she had to devote all her time and energy to regaining her health.

After a tough battle, Lisa was told she was in the clear earlier this year.

And when the first call to take in and nurse a desperate animal came, she was powerless to resist.

Even throughout the trauma, Lisa had still been surrounded by the animals she loves and she believes they helped her recovery.

She recalled: “I still ran the sanctuary but I did not take any patients in. I tried to work in the aviaries in the morning and go for radiotherapy in the afternoon, as one does.

“It kept me sane. I just got on with life, it’s far too short to worry about things like cancer. With the animals, I thought we may as well all be ill together. It is my lifeblood, let’s face it.

“I was too interested in life to be bothered about death.

“I find that the birds and animals, they are in very unusual circumstances and they do not necessarily like what they are presented with, but they accept it and it is a great example to anybody.

“And what they do is they just turn their minds inwards and get better and that is what I did.”

Lisa admits that once she had been placed in remission and built her strength back up, she cared too much about animals not to take more in.

An increased number of calls due to the seasonal closure of another animal sanctuary, at Ulgham, helped make up her mind.

Before her illness, Lisa, who is married to John, would take in animals and pay for their vet’s treatment.

She would often have up to 200 birds, mainly wildlife but also domestic creatures such as hens, at any one time.

But now as she seeks to cut back, she will only accept patients which have been to the vets and have a chance of being rehabilitated into the wild.

And whereas the sanctuary was once open to the general public, it is now closed.

At present Lisa has in the region of 60 patients, with around a dozen barn owls, merlins, buzzards and muscovy ducks brought or reported to her by vets, members of the public and even Northumbrian Water workmen since she began admitting animals again.

Some have already been released but Lisa still has around 30 longstanding patients that have been with her through her illness who can’t go back into the wild.

Unlike them, Lisa is now in excellent health, although she still has to take the drug Tamoxifen each day and go for check-ups every six months.

Despite that, her nursing duties mean that the cancer is the last thing on her mind.