A Missouri father had his barber shave a lightning bolt design into his head to match his son’s scars from skull reconstructive surgery.
Jonathan Tynes’ son, Hunter, was born with a medical condition where the plates in his head were fused together prematurely.
“It just really hit me in the gut; it was very heart wrenching that something could be severely wrong with him,” his mother, Danielle Tynes, told KMOV.
At the age of 21 months, Hunter underwent reconstructive skull surgery.
“So he had to be cut from ear to ear, opened up, and his skull totally reshaped,” Jonathan said.
The surgery was a success, and doctors cut a zig-zag pattern all the way across his skull.
Doctors chose the zig-zag pattern so his hair could grow back easily and cover up the scar.
For most of Hunter’s head, the zig-zag pattern worked. But the scar tissue on the side of his head did not seem to fill in with hair, leaving Hunter with a lightning bolt shaped-patch on both sides of his head.
Hunter’s visual reminder of his surgery made him grow more self-conscious, so his dad stepped in to give his son some encouragement.
“I said, ‘Your lightning bolts are really cool. I wish that I could have that,'” Jonathan said. “And he goes, ‘Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you have them? If they’re so cool, why don’t you get them?’ I said, ‘OK then I will.”
So Jonathan went to the barbershop and asked the barber to shave replica lightning bolt patterns into his head.
Hunter, now five years old, was pleased with his father’s decision, calling his father his “best friend.”