Community members cut hair off in support of childhood cancer awareness

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – It was “Go Bald or Go Home” for some people at Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital, Navicent Health this morning. September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

It’s the fifth annual “Go Bald or Go Home” event for the Medical Center, Navicent Health. The staff and community members are shaving their heads in support of kids fighting cancer.

“I want to share this with the children. I want them to recognize that it’s part of a disease and that there is nothing that is abnormal. It’s something that we are into and with and we support them,” Michael Hajworonski, who participated by shaving his head, said.

Patients like Jordan Holt is fighting a big fight, but he has an even bigger heart.

He’s battling, “stage 2 lung cancer,” Holt said.

Seeing people like his doctors shave their heads, shows he isn’t alone in his journey.

“Kids feel great when they see that the doctor [who] also doesn’t have hair and the teenagers especially, don’t want lose their hair and so they realize how little it means to have their doctor lose their hair,” Dr. Vishwas Sakhalkar said.

“It’s a good cause and I’m one of the pediatric residence, so I work pretty closely with the cancer center. So I couldn’t say no,” Kenneth James said.

Funds raised from the event goes towards pediatric cancer research. Doctors say cancer is the second leading cause of childhood deaths.

“One in four of them will not survive, but again, the rest of them will do well. So a lot of kids will have long-term complications and that is the next field that we need to tackle. They should be able to have jobs and should be able to be productive members of society,” Dr. Sakhalkar said.

Doctors say Navicent Health is getting a membership to the Children’s Oncology Group. Which would give them access to money to complete research for kids in the area