The love of bears

A lot of people probably had a teddy bear once, and some still have them. A few are so passionate about bears that they devote their lives to them.

One of those was a blipper called Rae Joy who I heard yesterday died a few days ago. I have followed her journal the edges of my life since last January. Rae was an Australian veterinary nurse who just about a year ago achieved her ambition of working for a bear rescue organisation in Vietnam, looking after 'bile bears' that had been captured in the wild and held in cages while their bile was extracted for use in Chinese medicine. The centre treated and cared for these traumatized and sick animals, giving them the chance of a pain-free life. Rae was passionately attached to the bears and wanted nothing so much as to carry on working with them but her time in Vietnam was bedeviled with illness, for which she underwent painful and unsatisfactory treatment on her own in small, impoverished Vietnamese hospitals. Eventually in October she was flown back to her home town of Perth, Australia, where she was diagnosed with a terminal condition; after a short period of chemotherapy she elected to stop the treatment and allow nature to take its course.

Rae never said much about her personal life but she expressed great appreciation for the interest and support of her Blip friends. There's a tribute to her from her colleagues here and the organisation she worked for, AnimalsAsia, is here if you would like to make a donation, sponsor a bear or get involved in their campaigns.

There's also a forum thread about Rae and one of her co-workers has also blipped about her.
This is my tribute to a courageous and caring person who chose a difficult path in order to help the bears she loved.