Dr. Daniel McNeely has only published one tweet in his entire life and it has already earned him internet fame for the sweetest reason.
The neurosurgeon from the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Canada recently posted photos of himself performing “surgery” on a little boy’s teddy bear before the youngster was put to sleep for an operation.
8-year-old Jackson McKie was undergoing surgery to have a cyst removed from his brain. Since he suffers from a chronic condition called hydrocephalus, McNeely has been taking care of Jackson since he was an infant.
So when Jackson brought in his teddy bear for the surgery, he asked McNeely if he could treat the toy as well – and the neurosurgeon was more than happy to oblige.
McNeely asked the nurses to set out an extra table and set of tools for the stuffed animal so he could sew up a small tear in the teddy’s arm. He even managed to fix the “injury” with some of the leftover stitches from Jackson’s surgery.
Since it was his first time operating on a toy, he asked the nurses to take pictures of the heartwarming gesture so he could post them to Twitter with a caption reading: “Patient asks if I can also fix teddy bear just before being put off to sleep… how could I say no?”
Not only was it McNeely’s first time operating on a toy, it was also his first ever tweet – and it earned him thousands of followers.
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“I thought it might make a few people smile, that was the only intention I had,” McNeely told CTV News Atlantic. “I’m glad that others are enjoying it.”
He hopes that it will help to set a higher bar for how healthcare professionals can go the extra mile to care for their patients and make them feel more comfortable in non-medical ways.
“[McNeely is] one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met,” Jackson’s father, Rick McKie, said about the surgeon earlier this week, adding that Jackson was “tickled pink” to wake up from surgery and find that he and his toy friend had both been successfully treated.
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
Cure Your Friends Of Negativity By Sharing The Sweet Story With Your Friends – Photo by Dr. Daniel McNeely