Man Paints His Toenails To Make Wife Smile After Cancer Diagnosis, Hundreds Of People Join In

When Valerie Brosdal was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, her husband Ralph Kapostins did what he could to make her feel better. He decided to bring her for a pedicure and when he was there he got his toes painted too, in a bid to make her smile. Valerie opted for a purple shade of nail varnish and Ralph followed suit. When they got home, he posted a photo of their matching toenails on Facebook. This inspired him to start a campaign and he asked other people to share their purple painted toenails in support of Valerie.

It's #purpletoes Wednesday! Share your photos w/ us. [email protected] pic.twitter.com/BIv6NqnC3T — LungCancerFoundation (@TheALCF) June 11, 2014

  Ralph told NBC about 400 people including "good friends, complete strangers, women, men, kids, entire families and pets, including dogs, cats and even a couple of horses" have shared photos. There's even proof of the horses getting in on the action as can be seen in the below photo. Horses with pink hooves Susan Woolf started a "Purple Toes" campaign in conjunction with the Lung Cancer foundation which encourages people to submit photos of their purple painted toenails for a living mural. Best of all, Ralph succeeded in his aim to make his wife Valerie smile as she wrote ""I've got a huge grin on my face" in response to one of the Facebook photos.