A doting dad shaved his head after years of growing dreadlocks in solidarity with the chemo hair loss his young daughter has been going through.
It’s always heartwarming to hear the lengths that parents will go to make their children feel special and loved. And while this can sometimes involve putting a lot of effort into something they’ll find fun , the contexts in which parents go the extra mile are usually more serious.
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Whether that’s because of a heartfelt gift on one of the most special days of their lives or a thoughtful idea to help them get through some tough times , we can find that their gestures are just as powerful as they are heartwarming.
And that’s the perfect way to describe one sacrifice an Arkansas dad made for his warrior of a little girl.
On March 22, Kevin and Nicolette Stokes of Conway, Arkansas noticed that something was amiss with their one-year-old daughter Nova.
As they shared in a TikTok video about her story, she suddenly grew extremely tired to the point of being almost unresponsive and showed some swelling in her stomach.
This led the couple to rush her to the emergency room, where they discovered that she had three tumors in her kidneys and stomach due to a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma.
And since she was already at stage four, they sought the best treatment possible so by May, she would be checked in to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
And while the initial news was as devastating as you would expect, the family also became more emotional than they anticipated after Nova started losing her hair as a result of her first round of chemotherapy in April.
As Ms. Stokes said to Good Morning America, “It happened so fast. Like, it honestly happened in a span of a day. It started to fall out the previous night, and then the next day, it was just like over half her head was bald, so we went and just cut the rest.”
About a month later, Nova’s father would make a decision that he never would have imagined agreeing to when the year began.
Stokes explained that he had been growing his dreadlocks since 2012 after spending his early life dreaming of having long hair. And up until his daughter’s chemotherapy, his dedication to that hairstyle meant enough to him that he had no plans to cut it.
Yet in his words, “But when this situation came up on us, I just felt like it was something I needed to do.”
And while he did this to support his daughter’s intense battle with the disease, he also sees it as an opportunity to make those curious about his decision aware of neuroblastoma.
And while his new look came as a shock to both of his daughters, it didn’t take them long to appreciate it after a period of staring at him.
Describing Nova’s reaction, Stokes said, “She’s like, ‘Aw, this is daddy,’ She started smiling and she touched my head and she was rubbing it and slapping it. So it was a shock for them but they came around to it.”
According to a comment on this video, Nova is in a relatively stable place at last report and is preparing for her third round of chemo.
Her family also has an active GoFundMe campaign that has raised $19,230 of its $100,000 goal at the time of this writing.
h/t: Good Morning America
