A TWO-year-old boy's life was saved by his trendy David Beckham-style HAIRCUT — after a trim led to doctors diagnosing a deadly blood disease.
Maddox Tallowin's dad Ben took a pair of scissors to the tot's cutting-edge Mohawk because it was getting too long and starting to flop.
But just as he was about to start chopping the gravity-defying barnet, Ben spotted a series of strange-looking lumps on the back of his son's head.
After rushing him to the hospital, specialists told Maddox's shocked parents the bumps were a tell-tale sign of leukemia.
Taxi driver Ben, 32, of Kirby Cross, Essex, said: "It was more luck than anything else that we noticed it.
"I felt these bumps on either side of his neck at the bottom of his head. It wasn't right. We made a doctor's appointment the same day.
"They came back with the results that afternoon and by the evening he had been admitted to a specialist hospital.
"It was the worst thing. You can't get your head around it at all."
The lumps on little Maddox's neck were found on October 14 last year. By the following day, he had been put on a course of chemotherapy.
He spent four grueling months at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, even celebrating Christmas and his third birthday there.
Maddox's mum Barbie, 33, a carer, said her son suffered from a bout of bad luck at the start.
She said: "He kept getting infections like chickenpox, para flu, and an infection in the line taking blood in and out of his chest.
"He pretty much spent four months solid in one little hospital room."
Maddox is in remission now, and the doctors have reduced the level of leukemia in his blood.
But he still has to make long trips to the hospital several times a week and will need chemo and intensive steroid treatment for three years.
The treatment has also destroyed his immune system, leaving the brave tot susceptible to infections and bugs, so he is in hospital almost every day.
Ben said: "He is such a brave little boy. He has up days and down days, but he takes everything in his stride.
"We are so proud of him and so glad we caught it early."