At Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, it's not uncommon to see toys as well as human patients recovering from surgery, according to a post on the hospital's blog.
Surgeons at the Milwaukee-based hospital routinely "operate" on children's favorite toys so they don't feel so scared of their own procedures.
For example, when 6-year-old Payson received a heart transplant, so did his favorite toy Batman, courtesy of Mike Mitchell, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the hospital.
In another instance, Travis Groth, MD, a pediatric urologist, stitched up 9-year-old Ryan's Mike Wazowski (a monster from the "Monsters, Inc." movie) doll after one of Ryan's surgeries, so they could recover together.
"When that child hears that his toy is also going under a procedure, it kind of really relieves some of that anxiety and stress," Dr. Groth told NBC Nightly News.