My Keloid Story
I first got my keloid when I scratched my chicken pocks. My mother also received some, but she was well into her adult years. Thus avoiding the nightmare of being teased by children. I remember I was in 4th grade, and everyone thought it was a mole. The Austin powers movie had just come out also, to my disdain.
Austin Powers Goldmember - Where Austin Powers meets someone who has a mole on his face and can't contain himself to point it out constantly. "Moley Moley" was my "nickname".
Looking back at it, these kids sucked, and this was ridiculous. I often see myself now, being sharper, wittier, and edgier than was as a kid, and wonder why I didn't "clap back".
It was too much, everyone joined in on the teasing, even the one person I called my friend. An excuse or lie that I told everyone, was that I got shot.
Fun fact: Scars are looked at differently when you tell people they come from being hurt/ damaged, as opposed to being a natural deformity. (I googled that when I was 18)
Fast forward, the keloid made me the virtually mute, I was the kid in class that did not talk for years. I saw no point. When I did talk, I stuttered, because I was not used to talking.
Do you see the domino effect?
I remember one day, I went into the bathroom and held a sharp pair of kitchen scissors over my keloid. Very close to cutting it off clean.
This would have caused irreversible damage & nonstop bleeding. It could have also resulted in a keloid that was twice as big, appearing.
I didn't do it. But I will never forget that day!
Highschool
Fast forward to high school - a combination of pressure, tea tree oil, 1 cortisone shot (that slightly reduced it, and constant silicone for years, made the keloid near untraceable. This process took years, and even though it was gone, the psychological effects stayed.
The quiet kid, who never talked, still did not talk!
Long story short - I invested in a few self-help books, that fixed that mess.
The one that helped the most was - The Game, by Neil Strauss
We won't talk about this book, as that's not the focus. My biggest takeaway from this book was "fake it until you make it". That's exactly what I did. Success
College
College is where I was afflicted by two keloids, between the time I enrolled, up until graduation.
One in the middle of my forehead, right before move-in day & one on my earlobe.
The one on my forehead came from constantly re-popping a pimple. Scratching it off each time it started to heal. It kept coming back, I didn't notice that it was forming into a keloid.
It became rigid and hard. Flashbacks to middle school caused me to start doing some very deep research. Why was this happening, I wondered.
Techniques
The first technique was pressure. - It did not work, it just made the keloid wider.
The next technique was - Crushed Asprin + Lemon Juice - This one worked, the keloid was being burned by the crushed aspirin. But it was a very slow process. Layer after layer came off of the keloid, it was peeling like an onion, and getting hard. I was impatient and used scissors to cut off the final few pieces of the keloid. BIG MISTAKE.
The keloid was gone for a week. It came back, the exact same size that it was, at the start of the crushed aspirin process.
I used visors to cover my forehead the entire first semester of college. I was so pissed.
Then I discovered the ACV or apple cider vinegar technique. With my creativity, I used ACV plus painters tape, a durag to hold the ACV on my head, and a rock to create the pressure, under the tape.
The keloid was gone within a month.
In my next post ill go over how I got rid of my earlobe keloid and things you should know about the psychological effects of having visible keloids. That you might not notice is affecting you.
Until then. Subscribe. DM me on Reddit, if that's where you found this blog.
comment where your keloid is, your story, how it effected you and what you plan to do about it.