Speaker 1: So let's talk about scarring um because that would be
Speaker 1: you know, and I assume that you work on people
Speaker 1: who have key Lloyd's, which is a real like we're
Speaker 1: learning that key Lloyd's is a real serious thing, but
Speaker 1: what exactly is it? That's yeah, okay, good, because I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask to people who get plastic surgery not
Speaker 1: know that the keyloid. Is they a way for you
Speaker 1: to know prior to surgery and then deal with it?
Speaker 1: You know that that's a great question. Key Lloids are
Speaker 1: really these tumorous growths of scar tissue. So anytime you
Speaker 1: cut yourself, you have an incision, or you just bump
Speaker 1: yourself on the table. If you're a keyloid former, that
Speaker 1: little laceration, that little cut can evolve into a scar
Speaker 1: tissue that grows outside the boundaries of that initial incision
Speaker 1: or scar, and so it then starts growing into other
Speaker 1: parts of your body and starts to take over and
Speaker 1: trap hair follicles and lead to all kinds of other issues.
Speaker 1: Would you know if you were a keyloid former before
Speaker 1: you went to have plastic surgery, you might not know.
Speaker 1: You may have gone your whole life never had a
Speaker 1: keyloid before and then you had cosmetic surgery or or
Speaker 1: even a heart surgery or necessary courneus, whatever the surgery is,
Speaker 1: and then you're you develop a keyloid. And the keyloids
Speaker 1: are incredibly painful, They continue to grow, often, they itch,
Speaker 1: They can be incredibly debilitating. They can keep you up
Speaker 1: at night. They are a problem that up to of
Speaker 1: people of color, people of color, Asians, Latins, people of
Speaker 1: African descent will have. So there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the world that are suffering from keyloids. So pictures
Speaker 1: of key lloid's right now. And you have worked on
Speaker 1: some big, big some of those keloid was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that we work on. We work
Speaker 1: on some that are the size of a pea, and
Speaker 1: we work on some that take over the entire face,
Speaker 1: take over the entire back, and it's horrible for these patients.
Speaker 1: We we had a gentleman who came to us from
Speaker 1: Chicago area, um Keenan, who was featured on our show,
Speaker 1: who he got his whole church involved because he just
Speaker 1: didn't have insurance that would cover his procedure. So he
Speaker 1: got his church involved to give him a donation to
Speaker 1: travel all the way to New York to have his
Speaker 1: surgery and it we couldn't do it in one surgery.
Speaker 1: It took years, years for us to remove all of
Speaker 1: the key Lloyds on his face. He couldn't go out.
Speaker 1: He wore a towel around his neck all the time
Speaker 1: because they were draining chronics. While they drain pus foul
Speaker 1: smelling discharge. We're coming out, and so you're telling me
Speaker 1: that insurance companies don't see this as being like an
Speaker 1: issue that should be on the list of things they cover.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes a lot of fighting. We spend
Speaker 1: a lot of our time caring for our patients and
Speaker 1: trying to convince the insurance companies that this is a
Speaker 1: necessary proceed Now, you imagine walking around with a beard
Speaker 1: of key Lloyd's just hanging off of your face, and
Speaker 1: you think that that is cosmetic. To remove that is cosmetic.
Speaker 1: It's not cosmetic. It is a medical condition that needs
Speaker 1: to be paid for by these insurance companies. But the
Speaker 1: insurance company. Insurance companies know that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: people that get this are brown people. There are people,
Speaker 1: and so they don't want to pay for that. Why why? What?
Speaker 1: What is it some some genetic thing. It is genetic
Speaker 1: and that's and that is that is the point. We
Speaker 1: don't know why it was formed. In my opinion is
Speaker 1: that evolution somehow wanted to try to create stronger scars
Speaker 1: because if you cut yourself, and before we had antibiotics,
Speaker 1: if you cut yourself, you wanted that that cut to
Speaker 1: heal and never open again. But oftentimes, you know, you've
Speaker 1: seen a boxer who you know, every time it gets
Speaker 1: in the ring, that one cut constantly is opening up.
Speaker 1: So in the in an evolution, maybe we form that
Speaker 1: stronger scar so that those cuts wouldn't open up, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get that infection, and you wouldn't die. So how
Speaker 1: did you So did you have a patient that you
Speaker 1: were doing plastic surgery on who got keyloids and then
Speaker 1: you were like, oh, shoot, this is an issue. Or
Speaker 1: do you just have people that showed up like can
Speaker 1: you help me with this? When we first opened our doors,
Speaker 1: we had people that just walked in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a keiler. You know, the most common place
Speaker 1: for a brother having a keyloid is in the back
Speaker 1: of his neck, because you know, we shave our heads close.
Speaker 1: The barber get a little too close. They go a
Speaker 1: little too close. In this the hair follicles shrink below
Speaker 1: below the skin. As those hair follicles are growing back,
Speaker 1: or the hair is growing back, it curls. Because we
Speaker 1: have curly hair. It creates an ingrown hair, and that
Speaker 1: ingrown hair creates inflammation that then leads to this big
Speaker 1: keyloid and so um, yeah, these those that's the most
Speaker 1: common sight for men. And imagine trying to sleep on that.
Speaker 1: Imagine trying to sleep on that every single night you
Speaker 1: are sleeping on a rock. Wow, that can also be us,
Speaker 1: I mean I would. So that's like an advocacy issue
Speaker 1: for people especially, Like I said, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: other people of color experienced key lloyd NG, but I've
Speaker 1: seen for black women and again in my family, it's
Speaker 1: an issue, and it's almost like, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a it's like something where I
Speaker 1: feel like my sister, at some point in her life,
Speaker 1: she probably dealt with a little bit of insecurity, you know,
Speaker 1: just because she has key Lloyd's or could not do
Speaker 1: certain things, always had to have the clip on airrings.
Speaker 1: But you know, of course now she's like, hey, it's
Speaker 1: right here, She's you know, she's cool. But she always
Speaker 1: said to me, are you sure you cut? Like, let's
Speaker 1: check it like it's a it's a worry, a concern
Speaker 1: for everyone that you would get these key Lloyd's. But
Speaker 1: I had no idea that people were getting them to
Speaker 1: that extent. Wow, were You're doing God's work, God's work,
Speaker 1: that's my slowly. We're very honored to be able to
Speaker 1: care for our patients because the common theme amongst all
Speaker 1: of them is that they don't know where to turn
Speaker 1: they have these We had a patient yesterday who came
Speaker 1: from Buffalo said she went to twenty practices in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: even went to the Cleveland clinic, and no one wanted
Speaker 1: to treat her keyloid. She had a keyloid in the
Speaker 1: pubic area, so she was incredibly self conscious. This thing
Speaker 1: was quite large in their groin area, so she was
Speaker 1: very self conscious, didn't want to be intimate any longer.
Speaker 1: And she was just depressed, incredibly depressed, even contemplated suicide.
Speaker 1: And so she had nowhere else to turn, no other practice.
Speaker 1: But we at Lexington Plastic certain are specializing in this
Speaker 1: disorder because we know that there's it's an underserved community
Speaker 1: that is adversely affected by it. Children too, children as well, ye,