How Saving Wildlife Helped Her Cope With Dehabiltating Pain.
She has chronic intractable migraine disease, but Teddy Flory puts animals first.
Every time I hold a baby squirrel in my hands, I feel a sense of wonder and gratitude at what I’m being entrusted with, at what God is asking me to do. I’m 27 and I volunteer as the squirrel team leader for Tri-County Wildlife Care (TCWC), a nonprofit rescue that rehabilitates and cares for injured, orphaned or displaced squirrels, birds and other wildlife in northern California’s Amador, Calaveras and San Joaquin counties. During the past seven years, I’ve helped
hundreds of “patients” heal and grow and, eventually, return to the wild.
It’s emotionally demanding work. Some days are hard, made harder by the fact that I have chronic intractable migraine disease. I live with disabling headache pain. So why do I pour so much of myself into taking care of baby squirrels? Because at the lowest point in my life, saving wildlife saved me too.
I have had migraines for as long as I can remember, since I was a toddler. Yet they didn’t keep me from enjoying school and my church youth group. Then, when I was 11 years old, I fell out of the recreation room window at our house in Castro Valley and suffered a serious head injury. The migraines intensified...Read More
