An antique teddy bear repair
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my oldest patient, so I thought I’d share one of them. Teddy was born in 1927. BTW, I originally told his story in 2018, now he’s 96!
He had been through a couple generations. His person was refurbishing his original owner’s chair, and wanted him healthy to enjoy it. Here’s Teddy’s diagnosis photos:
The plan was to recover Teddy’s pawpads (all four so they would match), give him a spa, stitch any small wounds (like his ear), a new felt toungue and give him a new teddy bear growler. His current person remembered his teddy bear growler when she was little, but it hadn’t worked in years. We were keeping his wear, because he’d earned it after 91 years!
Here’s Teddy starting his spa:
Yep, he sunk into the bubbles. 🙂
Teddy had a small heart of original stuffing with a tiny bit of the wood strips from his head. His new stuffing was all modern polyfiber:
His body had to leave room for a new teddy bear growler. The old one had hardly any stuffing around it, and was rubbing against his skin on the inside. The new one (ordered special from Germany) had to share his torso with the heart and some stuffing. Teddy’s teddy bear growler sounds a bit like a lamb, usually making a long “baaaaa” sound, but if you bounce him up and down he goes “ba ba ba ba”.:-)
Here were the first photos of Teddy feeling better:
His person wanted his hand stitching adjusted a bit, and a touch more stuffing in his belly. Here are the final photos before he went home:
Teddy flew home yesterday to Iowa. His person wrote:
Thank you for making Teddy a heirloom our family can be proud of for years to come!
So that’s one of the older patients we’ve had (though not the oldest, some were almost 100). He came in in pretty good shape, and just needed a bit of sprucing. He was sharing the hospital with some patients who were just a few months old (dog attacks), several in their 20s and 40s, and even a world travelling alpaca. 🙂
