Scarred & Scared no more
They are Scar-y stories that will leave you wide awake.
The characters in these Scar-y tales are called “monsters” and “weirdos” simply for how they look. One young lady with a congenital disfigurement was so grateful for the pandemic because for the first time in her life, she could use a mask every day.
And yet, they have to live with their condition because charity organizations understandably allocate resources for other life- threatening diseases.
“Have you ever seen somebody line up on a medical mission because of a scar? Or have you ever heard of an organization that does scars for free? No. The reason is because they think probably it’s just a scar. There are other more life-threatening conditions,” says Dr. Hayden Kho, CEO of the Belo Medical Group.
“It’s very expensive. But for us, our expertise is making people beautiful,” explains Dr. Hayden.
And why is it important for Belo to make people beautiful?
“Because it’s linked to people’s confidence. It’s linked to their self-love,” he replies. “Vicki says, ‘A one-millimeter scar on the face is a kilometer in the heart.”
Not a book, but one for the books
Thus, on its 35th anniversary, the Group is launching the Scar project, with all its doctors and plastic surgeons onboard. They have also invited a psychiatrist to help with the inner scars of their physically-scarred patients.
“The Scar project is an initiative of the Belo Medical Group, which is also a passion project of mine and of Vicki, where we look for individuals who have ‘Scar stories,’ stories of courage and determination despite their disfigurement,” Dr. Hayden told me and PeopleAsia contributing editor Büm D. Tenorio Jr.
“I’ve asked Vicki many times if I can produce a book for our 35th anniversary, if I can have somebody write the book for her. And she’s like, I’m not interested. Why would anyone want to know my story? Why would I even want to promote my story? Anyway, so she said she wanted to do something different, wanted to do something significant, but still connected to what we do. We’ve been praying about it, and then one day, I thought, why don’t we fix the scars and deformities that are really difficult to fix?”
“When we say Scar story, we’re not just looking for pilat or peklat,” says Dr. Hayden. “We’re referring to, yes, scars. They can also be deformities, which they got from accidents or trauma, domestic abuse, child abuse, burns, self-harm, and many others.”
Since they launched it last month, they have received about 120, 130 submissions. The Belo Medical Group has narrowed down the beneficiaries to seven, and their names will be announced next month.
Listening to the stories of the applicants left Dr. Hayden wide awake.
“Just imagine, one whole afternoon just listening to stories of people hoping, dreaming, almost begging, ‘I just want to look normal. I just want to be accepted. I just want people to stop calling me a monster or a weirdo or someone who’s not from this planet. I just want the bullies to stop bullying me. I just want my mom to accept me’.”
“How did we choose the beneficiaries? First, we choose, of course, the most important ones. Can we actually do something about it or not? Because there are some submissions that even if we want to do, we can’t do anything about them, at least at this time.
“Either the technology doesn’t exist yet, or the patient is too young. I’ll give you an example. We had a submission of a child who was below five. Burned half of her body. We can do it, but it will cause significant trauma to the child. So we would prefer to wait for her to grow up.”
One applicant told him, “Even if you don’t choose me, I thank you in advance because you’re not just healing our faces, but you’re healing our hearts and you’re giving us hope.”
Life-changing
“As a family value of ours, we believe that we are blessed to be a blessing. That’s, I think, that’s core to this project. We have been richly blessed, Vicki, myself, and Scarlet, our family, and the Belo Medical Group,” says the tall and handsome doctor, who admits he has emotional scars — that have healed, he stresses — even if he does not have physical ones.
Scarlet Snow, Hayden and Vicki’s 10-year-old daughter who loves math and also wants to be a singer and a YouTuber at this time, is not shielded from the harsh realities of life.
“Scarlet, is exposed to things like this. She recognizes that she is living a blessed life. And that hopefully, through our example, through our modelling, she will do the same as she grows up. She will have compassion towards other people. Not just empathy, but compassion. Empathy is when you feel the pain, the hardship of another person. Compassion is when you have that feeling, when you feel that, and you feel compelled to actually do something about it,” says her father.
Hayden believes his family and the Belo Group are blessed, “Not for our own sake, not for our popularity, not for our influence, not for our self-aggrandizement. But it’s more because God has given you a lot, you give for God’s glory.”
You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.
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