My daughter has a stuffed monkey named HaHaHa. He has been an important part of our family since she was about a year old. Before you make fun of his name, his name is HaHaHa because that is how a monkey talks. She takes his name very seriously and is not at all ashamed. He is, after all, her best friend. With a name like HaHaHa you cannot help but feel happy when you are around him.
HaHaHa is an incredibly well-traveled and well-dressed monkey. He, I believe, might own every outfit Build-A-Bear has created appropriate for a monkey. He has a tuxedo (he plans to wear it if he ever has the opportunity to meet Taylor Swift), pajamas, underwear, overalls, and an entire shark wardrobe. He has roller skates and a helmet. He has been everywhere we have been, to fifty states and multiple foreign countries. I have almost as many pictures of HaHaHa as I do with my children.
Over the years HaHaHa has developed a personality. He is her confidante. She can tell him anything and he listens. Sometimes he will talk back (he has a funny monkey voice that only sounds a little like mine). He gives sage advice and usually makes excellent suggestions about how to deal with life’s challenges. He is part of our family, and even her brother, who thinks fairytales are all big lies and magic is not real, embraces HaHaHa as an important member of the household. HaHaHa is and always will be a very important monkey.
Several years ago, when my daughter thought she might die, she struggled mightily about who should have HaHaHa, whether he should be buried with her and live in heaven or stay here on earth with me so I would still have him to love when she was gone. Thankfully, I never had to follow through and separate them for eternity.
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You might be wondering what makes HaHaHa so special. How this monkey got elevated to a status akin to that of the Velveteen Rabbit. How he came to life, so to speak. I am honestly not quite sure, but I do know this.
In her lifetime my daughter has experienced far more than her share of adversity. She has endured long surgeries and longer recoveries. She has been in the hospital more times than I can count or honestly even care to. At the beginning she needed something she could hold and snuggle. Something that comforted her. Something that grounded her when I walked away even for a second. Her world was harsh and scary. She needed a companion to make it friendlier. HaHaHa was just the monkey for the job.
As she got older her world did not change. It stayed harsh and scary. HaHaHa was, and still is, allowed to go to all the places I am not. He can go with her into the dark scary unknown. He has accompanied her down the lonely hallway to the operating room every single time she was wheeled down it. He has been allowed to stay tucked carefully under her arm when I have been forced to walk away. He has been the last thing she sees when she is put to sleep, and he is allowed back with her as she wakes up scared, confused, and in pain long before I am allowed back in. He has always stayed. He has always been her familiar face in the darkest places. She hugged him tight to her chest when the pain was so great she could not speak or move. She has tucked him under her chin at her hardest moments, and his fur has caught her tears, and more than a few of mine. HaHaHa is a faithful and devoted friend, always there even in the darkest moment.
He is a tangible reminder of love and security.
It is hard sometimes in our dark moments to feel loved and secure, especially if you do not have a magnificent magical monkey. As humans we need love and security. We need relationships. We yearn for them. Even in, especially in, our dark places. We need something, someone to cling to when the road is just too hard, when the burden is too much for us to bear.
I think that often in health care we forget this. We forget sometimes our patients are walking their hardest journeys, living their worst nightmares, having the hardest day ever. We forget that they need tangible reminders of love and security. In the hospital, we often strip them of all of those things, their clothes, their own bed, their family. We take away their tools and then wonder why they cannot cope, why they struggle, why they do not obey.
When kids turn eighteen, they are thrust suddenly into the adult world of medicine, the world that does not have distractions, prizes for procedures, chains of beads to mark the hard journey. They no longer have colorful sheets or pillowcases, no more princesses on the walls, and they sometimes struggle, needing something to cling onto. Older patients with dementia become confused, lashing out, no longer tethered to reality. They also need something to tether them to the world, to the memories of their past. Middle-aged patients who, while sick, still yearn for their mommy to give them a kiss and make it all better.
I keep a box of new stuffed animals in my office. They serve many needs. They comfort overwhelmed learners. They provide tangible memories for families who are losing loved ones. They provide comfort to patients who are lonely and need something to hold onto. They provide a tether to memories of the past. They are willing friends.
It is a small intervention, a remarkably simple one, with no side effects, no drug-drug interactions, no risk. But an intervention nonetheless, one that makes people smile, gives them a friend, and for a moment reminds them that someone cares.
Christine Marie Deeths is a family physician.
