One week before Allie Allen was set to attend Houston High School's homecoming dance, she was absolutely devastated. At the age of 14 years old, the young woman was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor known as anaplastic ependymoma and, recently, she relapsed. “With cranial spinal radiation comes lots and lots of terrible side effects,” Allen writes. “Now of course the side effect I was dreading the most–hair loss… Wednesday afternoon I got out of the shower and brushed my hair and noticed it falling out. Of course I had a meltdown. It's easy for some people to say ‘it's just hair' but it's hard when you're a teenage girl… On Saturday the majority of my hair was falling out and it was just torture to watch. Sunday morning I woke up with about 2 chunks of hair left and I decided to pull a Britney Spears 2007 and shave my head. That was very hard for me to do but that's one thing I got over and am not stressing over it anymore. One of these pictures shows my scar now everyone can see it, but a scar is a tattoo with a better story, right?”
While this is hard enough to deal with, it's not all that Allen's had to take on. In March, her grandfather passed away after his battle with brain cancer and, currently, her mother is coping with breast cancer. To support his homecoming date and longtime friend during this difficult time, Brayden Carpenter decided to shave his head for their homecoming dance, as a way to help Allie feel comfortable. “Allie had no clue until he showed up!” Alli's mom Debbi wrote on Facebook. “Now that is class!!!”
Allen Family: GoFundMe
via [A Plus, Bored Panda]
