10-Year-Olds Shave Heads To Help Friend With Cancer Fit In
BETHESDA, Md. (WJZ)—A Maryland elementary school student is receiving a chorus of support from his classmates.
Monique Griego has the story of Brandon Carboni. He's been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and his young friends are doing something extraordinary.
Ten-year-old Brandon Carboni is a fifth-grader at Bethesda Elementary School. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma took away his hair, but not his friends.
"He's just a happy-go-lucky kind of kid, he's just everyone's best friend," said Melissa Wade, Brandon's mother.
Days before the school year, Carboni was getting increasingly nervous about going to school with no hair.
"People would make fun of me. I felt like I don't want to do this no more. Probably want to be homeschooled for a while," he said.
A baseball coach dreamed up an idea. What if a couple of Carboni's friends did something drastic to look like him? So one by one, Carboni's friends shaved their head--13 boys in all. He would no longer stand out on that first day of school.
"I felt happy that people would do that for me," Carboni said.
"It was probably the most emotional day in my life," said Steve Carboni, Brandon's dad. "It was a tough day in a very positive way."
Off came the hair, on came the smiles. Baldness was overshadowed by belly laughter.
"It was out-of-control in the barber shop," Steve Carboni said.
"I wasn't really sure at 10 years old they really get it. And the kids did," Wade said.
Now Brandon Carboni is back in school and still surrounded by his fuzzy-headed friends.
"I think we learned how important they are and how they can cheer you up when things are tough," Steve Carboni said.
"I felt grateful," Brandon Carboni said.
Hair may come and go, but friends last forever.
Brandon Carboni has endured four surgeries and two rounds of chemotherapy, but now doctors say his prognosis is excellent.
