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 When my mother had been hit by the car, I was knocked out of her pouch and landed in a thistle bush. I had crawled back into my mother's pouch when the ranger found me. Being dark, he didn't see part of a thistle thorn still in my left eye. Donna took me to the vet to have it removed and I was given a shot of antibiotics.With all of this stress happening, I was hiccoughing (a sign of stress in wombats) and would suffer from diarrhoea for the next week.
Two weeks later and I started to refuse to drink my milk that I would normally receive - a bottle of special milk, 3 times a day, that contained all the good nutrients that my mother's milk would normally contain. Wombats (and in fact all marsupials) cannot drink cows' milk - we are lactose intolerant.
When Donna tried to feed me, I started to shiver and would struggle to drink anything. In just two days I drank only enough to keep me barely alive. I was taken to the vet, and the diagnosis was not very good. If I didn't start to take my milk, I would be dead within 3 days.
The stress of my mother being killed had really upset me. Like so many other animals, the stress was not apparent until later, and had taken a while to manifest itself. The vet believed that I had developed stomach ulcers which were causing me a lot of pain when I tried to eat or drink. She prescribed a medicine that a human infant with stomach ulcers would take, and in very small doses. If she was right, then I had a chance to live. If she was wrong...
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