Rutger and Lillknorpe’s first trip together

As you all might know by now I have got a new friend, Lillknorpe. He was adopted by my owner and comes from a nice gentleman that said he thought Lillknorpe would like it better with me than with him, since he works so much. Lillknorpe and I have become really good friends, actually such good friends that I let him come with me down to Göteborg when my owner was going to have another operation.

We even took a camera with us, so we could take a few pictures and then tell you our story. My owner says there are way too many pictures of Lillknorpe and I and not many of her, but if you look closely you see she is in half the pictures!

If the pictures are hard to view, you can click on them to look at a larger version. The smaller pictures are so that the page does not become so big that you do not want to read the full story and look at the pictures, too.

OK, lets start our story!




On Tuesday afternoon, July 6th 1999 we flew down to Göteborg in the Ambulance plane. Lillknorpe and me were allowed to fly the plane all the way down to Göteborg. As a bear you become quite skilled at many things, so I am a very skilled pilot. I got my pilot certificate when I sent in 10 coupons that I got from cereal boxes. I will put up a picture of it soon, but I lost it when I was cleaning my room, so you'll have to bear with me.

Bummer, just now my owner came in to the room and saw what I had written. She told me to stop lying and tell you that I do not know how to fly a plane at all. The picture above shows how Lillknorpe and I were allowed to sit on the dashboard for part of the flight. So as you can see the plane has two pilots, but they are not bears. Although the pilot, Peter, is getting big like a real bear around his waist.











When we arrived in Göteborg it was time for the examinations. Both Lillknorpe and I hoped that we would get a good examination by the doctor. Lillknorpe was a bit afraid though since this was his first ever time in a hospital. We waited and waited and waited for the doctor to arrive.



But when the doctor arrived he was not at all interested in us, all he wanted to do is to examine my owner. He used a Popsicle stick to look down her throat. My owner says she is very good at this type of examination because she can stop it from making her feel sick, but some people don't like this examination at all. I personally would not want anyone sticking mirrors or Popsicle sticks down my throat!


Lillknorpe and I tried to be as helpful as possible. We handed the doctor the tools he needed to examine my owner. But he did get a bit upset when we handed him a pair of scissors when he asked for a throat mirror! He was grateful that we helped him to clean his head mirror. Teddybear paws are very good for polishing mirrors since we don't leave fingerprints; teddybears do not have fingers!


Since we did arrived quite late in the afternoon there wasn't much to do but help my owner to shower before the operation and to wait for bedtime. Lillknorpe and I had hoped for our own bed to share, but apparently something had gone wrong in the booking so we had to sleep in a drawer. But we did try out my owner’s bed to make sure it was bouncy enough to jump on!


After a rather uncomfortable night in the drawer (Lillknorpe snores like a pig!) it was time to go down to the operation room for my owner's operation. In the pre-op room we met a little girl that had to remove a tube through her nose. The girl did not like to take her sleepy medicine so we helped her, we talked to her so much she totally forgot the medicine was tasting awful.


Later we were wheeled into the operation room and my owner jumped up on the operation table as if she was really looking forward to the operation. My owner has had over 200 operations, so she is very used to be in the operation room, she even knows the people working there! In this picture you see the oxygen and gas machine in the front right. In the background you see a big TV-monitor they use to see better when they operate.


My owner talks a lot and when she does it is funny to watch the different monitors. Her heart rate increases to almost 90 when she speaks, but drops to 70 when she keeps quiet. I think the staff likes her when she is not talking, but I enjoy looking at the monitors so I try to make her laugh and talk. My owner's boyfriend told me he likes it also when she is quiet, but he is a Canadian, so what does he know?


Since Lillknorpe is a bit afraid of the hospital, being his first time and all, I told him he had to concentrate on the EKG curve on one of the monitors. He did look so funny when his head was moving up and down in the same beat as the curve. Lillknorpe is so gullible, I think it is because he is so much bigger than I am, he has more brain to fool. It could also be all the candy he eats, his old owner really liked good food and gave Lillknorpe all the leftovers. And we all know that when bears eat lots of fat their brains get smaller.


For some reason Lillknorpe understood that my owner and I had played a trick on him, so when I was concentrating on talking calmly to our owner – to make her relax – he got hold of the sleepy gas mask and turned on the gas and aimed the mask at me. Boy, did I get sleepy! I almost fell off the chair we were sitting on! I am going to get him back next time we are in hospital. Maybe I will suggest him to try out an enema.


Finally the staff was ready to start the operation on my owner. We had a chance to take a last photograph of her inhaling the sleepy gas before we had to leave the room to wait outside. If you look closely on the big picture you can see her eyes are all cross-eyed. I wonder what they do in the operation room, that they do not want to show me, since they asked me to leave. Maybe they have a disco in there and dance around the table dressed up in funny clown outfits.


The operation did not take a long time, so when they wheeled my owner to the recovery room Lillknorpe and I could go with her. She did not get to stay in the recovery room long enough so we could not take any pictures in there. But when we got back to the ward we did spend some time climbing the IV drip trolley and sliding back down on it like firemen do. That was fun!









When my owner did wake up a bit more we checked on her to see if she wanted us to help her to call her boyfriend to tell him that everything was OK with her. Lillknorpe had to help me since the human phones are way too big for bears as small as we are. My owner’s boyfriend was happy to hear we had taken good care of her and that she was soon on her way back home.



Unfortunately we had to stay a bit longer than planned in the hospital because the Ambulance plane could not pick us up when we were done, so Lillknorpe and I helped my owner to check her emails, chat with her online friends and brows the web during the weekend. We also started writing this story, but it is very complicated being this small. So Lillknorpe used the left side of the keyboard and I used the right side, we both jumped on the keys to produce enough pressure to make letters on the screen. Since I was on the right side of the keyboard I also had to jump a lot on the backspace key since Lillknorpe kept typing the wrong letters. We finally gave up and decided we should dictate what we wanted to write to my owner so that we would not totally exhaust ourselves.






When we flew back home on Monday morning, July 12th, I was allowed to land the plane. The nice pilot thought I was a natural so he did trust me when I showed him the nice license I got in that cereal box. Well, at least he did let me try out his seat when we had landed and hold the steering wheel. It is very hard to not be honest when you have your owner writing your story and so easily could delete any lies.



OK, I hope you all liked our story and the pictures we took when we visited the hospital together with my owner. Oh, and she is doing very well by the way.