This father's day, one man decided to walk the extra mile to make his cancer-afflicted son less conscious of hair loss and the disease; he got a tattoo scar at exactly the same spot on the head as his son's surgery scar.
Josh Marshall posted a photo showing him cuddling with his son, Gabriel, who was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, a brain cancer. He had surgery to remove a brain tumor following which the scar on his head made him self-conscious. To ease his son's thoughts, the father not just shaved his head but also got a tattoo identical to the scar.
"Ones a real scar. One is a tattoo to show support and make him feel normal," Marshall wrote on his Instagram.
Marshall also submitted the image for St. Baldrick's Foundation's #BestBaldDad competition. "We've already shaved over 40,000 heads this year to raise money for kids' cancer research. That's a lot of bald heads! So for Father's Day, we wanted to do something special for all the extra-special dads who went bald in support of kids with cancer," the competition's page reads.
With over 5,000 votes, his image was declared winner. The win has Gabriel excited, Marshall told The Huffington Post.
"I would like to thank everyone for helping make this happen it's an honor to be titled 2016's #BestBaldDad but the truth is I'm no better then any of the other contestants we are all great father's that would go to any extent to help our children so in my eyes we're all winners," Marshall said in a Facebook post following his win.
In the US alone, nearly 16,000 children aged under-19 years are diagnosed with cancer and nearly 2,000 die of the disease every year. Childhood cancer survival rates, particularly for a few blood cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukemia, most common childhood cancer, have greatly increased over the years.
