A neurosurgeon at IWK Health Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia sewed up a teddy bear belonging to an 8-year-old patient at her request. Dr. Daniel McNeeley was just about to head into surgery with the little boy when he begged the surgeon to help close up the rip in his favorite teddy bear.
Patient asks if I can also fix teddy bear just before being put off to sleep… how could I say no? pic.twitter.com/WOKFc5zr91
— P. Daniel McNeely (@pdmcneely) September 30, 2018
- McNeely shared photos of the unconventional procedure on his Twitter page. “Patient asks if I can also fix teddy bear just before being put off to sleep… how could I say no?” he wrote alongside two photos of himself working on the teddy bear, which was wearing a little oxygen mask.
- The little boy was desperate for the surgeon’s help. As per Global News, the boy who requested the bear be fixed was a longtime patient of McNeely’s named Jackson McKie. He is said to have a cyst on his brain and hydrocephalus and always had his bear, Little Baby, with him whenever he underwent the necessary invasive procedure to re-open a shunt to drain excess fluid.
- Little Baby had been with McKie for his entire life. “It’s his best buddy,” the boy’s father, Rick McKie, told CBC. He revealed that the stuffed bear was given to the family when they went to get an ultrasound to find out the sex of their baby. “When he was born, he had it ever since with him. Through thick or thin.”
- McNeely took the procedure very seriously. Not only did he don blue gloves and leftover stitches from Jackson’s surgery to repair the tear on the bear’s underarms, but he made sure the bear had enough oxygen throughout. “There’s always a few stitches that are leftover from the case itself and they normally get disposed of,” McNeely told USA Today. “I thought it was an unusual request, but I was only too happy to help if it could provide the patient with a bit of comfort.”
