Affairs of the heart at shelter

Kim Waters
Newborn feeding schedules are always tough but waking every two hours to feed a 70-gram baby joey is second nature to open-heart surgery patient Helen Burrell.
Ms Burrell and husband David have battled her health problems and tight finances to run Leopold Wildlife Shelter for five years on community donations and their pension money.
Ms Burrell, who faces a second open-heart operation next year, said their lifestyle was chaotic.
“At the moment we have six eastern grey kangaroos, two swamp wallabies and around 20 brush tailed possums bouncing around the house,” she said.
“We don’t have a big sign up, so we just look like any other house in the street until you walk in the door and are greeted by kangaroos, possums and birds.”
Doctors diagnosed Ms Burrell’s coronary artery disease 12 years ago.
She said a quadruple bypass and an aortic heart valve operation had slowed her down “a tad”.
“I’ll improve a lot more when they fix my leaky right valve,” Ms Burrell said.
Volunteer Gail Mortimer said the shelter operated every day of the year.
“They (the Burrells) are the only people who go out from Warrnambool to Werribee seven days a week, every hour of the day or night to look after animals,” she said.
Ms Burrell said the busy schedule was tiring.
“The day I came out of hospital after open-heart surgery we did four rescues and the last time we slept the whole way through the night was January 25, so it can be hard.”
The Leopold Wildlife Shelter was also a training facility.
“I don’t want to take all this knowledge with me when I go, so we freely give out all the information we can,” Ms Burrell said.
People with donations or animal reports can phone the centre on 5250 4024.