A toddler who is undergoing cancer treatment asked his mum if he could "put his hair back on" when it started to fall out.
Jade Faulkner, 25, and her partner Sam Cook, 26, from Burton, first realised something was wrong when their son Todd, who will be three next month, developed a lump under his chin.
When antibiotics did not help to reduce a swollen lymph node, the toddler was taken to hospital for tests, Derbyshire Telegraph reported.
Last month his parents were told that he had cancer.
Jade said: "I’ve been trying so hard to stay level-headed and make sure we get to all his appointments and do all the research, but he's losing his hair now and that's really hard.
"When I was washing his hair it was all coming out in the bath. He's always had lovely thick hair so that was horrible.
"My other half shaved his hair too so they can look the same but Todd said he wants to put his hair back on.
"I just had to explain that it’s the medicine that's making it fall out but it will come back when he is better.
"It was heartbreaking."
Jade, who works as a chef, first noticed the lump in January.
"Todd was fine in himself but I rang 111 and they said to get him to the doctors to get checked out," she said.
"It was a Sunday so we took him the next day and they said it's probably a swollen lymph node.
"We took him back the week after and the week after that as it wasn’t going away; it was just getting bigger.
"Finally they sent us to the hospital where he was given antibiotics but they didn’t touch it so we were referred to the oncology department at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
"At that point I still didn’t think it was anything serious but I knew in my gut it wasn’t right.
"I didn’t even think of cancer to start with. It was only when someone I work with asked if I was worried it might be cancer that I started to panic."
Todd was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in soft tissue and mainly affects children.
Less than 60 children are diagnosed with it each year in the UK.
Jade continued: "The doctor said it's like lightning, it just strikes.
"I just don’t understand why our little Todd, who doesn’t deserve this, has to go through it."
While Todd is being "very brave" in the way he is handling the treatment, it is taking its toll on both mother and son.
"It started to affect his speech a bit and when he was in the hospital we noticed he was snoring really badly, almost like he was fighting for breath," Jade said.
"I don’t think it’s really hit me.
"We're at home now but he's got to have chemotherapy and he might need radiotherapy further down the line. He’s also got to have a full body MRI scan to see if the cancer’s spread.
"The chemotherapy destroys the immune system as well as the cancer cells so he is classed as vulnerable with the virus going round.
"Every three weeks we have to go in and stay for a couple of nights.
"While we're in hospital only one person can stay with Todd, which means we’ve been having video calls and phone calls with Sam and the doctors.
"It’s hard for me to sit there with Todd and deal with it on my own."
Friends of the family have set up a fundraising page to help the Faulkners during Todd's treatment.
Click here to view the page.
