Awesome dad gets a tattoo of his son's cancer surgery scar

Brian Koerber
Updated
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After undergoing surgery for brain cancer, 8-year-old Gabriel Marshall was left with a scar on the right side of his head. In order to boost his self-confidence, Gabriel's father, Josh Marshall, decided to get a tattoo exactly like his son's scar. 

Images of Josh's tattoo started to gain mass attention on social media after he entered a competition for the St. Baldricks Foundation for the Best Bald Dad of 2016. The competition consists of men who shave their head to raise awareness and funding for childhood cancer and research.

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"Got my son’s scar tattooed to help his self-confidence," Josh wrote when entering the competition.

This year, Josh and Gabriel came in first place with over 5,000 votes.  

"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," Josh wrote on Facebook. "We are all great fathers that would go to any extent to help our children, so in my eyes we're all winners."

Josh also admits that he had no clue that this picture would go viral. 

"Wow, I never imagined this picture would blow up like it did," Josh wrote on Facebook, sharing a post from Inked Magazine. 

The photo was also posted to the Instagram account bamf_nation, and has since received over 138,000 likes. 


BuzzFeed News reports that Gabriel was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, a rare malignant brain tumor in March of 2015, which prompted the surgery. 

Image: Josh Marshall

And although Josh says that Gabriel does still have some of the tumor on his brain, the latest scans indicate that he is now stable.

Josh isn't the first parent to get a tattoo in order to boost their child's confidence, Adam and Tanya Phillips of Grimsby, England also went under the needle to get tattoos that match their daughter's large birthmark so that she won't feel uncomfortable growing up. 

Mashable has reached out to Josh Marshall for additional comments and information. 

[h/t: BuzzFeed]