Latest / Scalpel and Skin / The Problem With the Aesthetics Industry: Who Can You Trust? | EP 01

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The Problem With the Aesthetics Industry: Who Can You Trust? | EP 01 · Scalpel and Skin

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of fear in new people just going in and injecting.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Take a weekend course, and then on Monday they're injecting people.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Break the stigma that cosmetic work, classic surgery, aesthetic makes you look fake because that is not a patient problem.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's a provider problem.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can find people who have been injecting for three weeks.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We won't touch anybody unless they've been injecting for years.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's very confusing for consumers to know what's legit, what's worth investing in.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it's not worth investing in this is Scalpel and Skin.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is our very first version, our very first episode of Scalpel and Skin.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with my sister, Mystica Labrasca.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna start out by talking about how Scalpel and Skin started.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are business partners in a medical spa in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Skin Lab.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm here with my beautiful baby sister.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Mystica, why don't you just introduce yourself?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us who you are.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Mystica.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have the millennial urge to do a peace sign.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I had to do it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a millennial thing.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a millennial thing.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I the whole time we were talking, I was like, I feel like just like I need to do this.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I did it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's out of the way.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I finished PA school in 2010.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I started working for a very prominent cosmetic dermatologist in Pittsburgh.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Give her the shout-out.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Obaji.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's amazing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's the best.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone knows her name.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is Obaji of Obaji Medical.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So she's incredible.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's talk about that just for a moment.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're gonna we're immediately gonna go off script.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2010, I was finishing my plastic surgery fellowship.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was about to start my practice about three months later, and Mystica was finishing PA school, and she says, I'm in the car in Detroit, Michigan, where I was doing my fellowship.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Mystica calls me on the phone.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Yeah, I have this interview.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's in dermatology.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's with uh I'm like, oh yeah, what's what's the name?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Obagi, oba.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Obagi?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I might have said it like that.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You said Obagi.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I was like, Obagi?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Yeah, it's O B A G I.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, you have to take that job.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, What?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you have to take that job because um, you know, she was just finishing PA school.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: She's like 25 years old.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, uh, you know, I think maybe in a couple of years I'm gonna move somewhere south, somewhere warm or whatever.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, if you work for her for a couple of years, you will be able to go wherever you want because it's such a prominent name in dermatology and cosmetics world.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Okay.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, all right, thanks.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm super nervous for the interview.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So she took a chance on me as a new grad.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm forever indebted to her.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I was with her for 13 years doing mostly cosmetic dermatology, injectables, lasers, skincare peels, treated a lot of acne scarring and different types of scarring in that in that practice.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I also did some medical dermatology.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So skin cancer screenings, biopsies, rashes, all that fun stuff.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2023, we started talking about what if we join forces?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: What if we do this together?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was ready to grow at that point.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And working in corporate medicine, there's not really any room for growth as a PA.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something else happened to us in 2021 as well.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we're siblings and we there's a little bit of an age gap between us, as you I know it's hard to tell.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: As you can tell, I'm actually the I'm actually the older one, even though, you know, it's hard to tell.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But in 2021, our mom was diagnosed with uh lung cancer, and it was stage four at the time of diagnosis, and it's just the two of us.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were the only two siblings, and we had to work together.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to work together to help our mom.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we were an incredible team.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as it went along, we're just like, you know what?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think, do you think we might have been wrong?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You think we can maybe work together at some point in time?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so she passed in December of 2021, right before Christmas.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then we just we went about our lives for, you know, for another year or so.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we just started talking about things.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually, here we are, opened up Skinlab.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Mystica.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's your so Skin Lab is we're partners in it, but in name only, because she just yells at me and tells me, What?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she's very scary, even though she's little.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she's she's very scary and mean.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just to me, though.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're both hot-blooded Italians.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: What can I say?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little hotter.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I run a little hotter, probably.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is true.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: She uh you know, fine.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's hotter, uh, you know, and spunkier.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine, fine.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I admit it, you're better looking.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's whatever.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: First time ever.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I meant in temperament, but that too, probably.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Devs, producers cut that part out.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never actually said that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so for 10 years, we said there's no way we're gonna work together.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then here we are, two and a half years into an extremely successful uh practice together.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I still have my plastic surgery practice.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm 16 years in, she's 16 years into cosmetic dermatology as well as some medical dermatology.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she actually took a year and worked at the melanoma clinic in Pittsburgh as well.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a that was a wild experience as well.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to you wanna tell me?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I remember your first week there.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what you saw the first week?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was so much perspective because melanoma is a cancer of the young.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually the number one can't cause of cancer-related deaths in people 25 to 29.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: That might be a slightly outdated statistic, but at one point, very recently it was.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I didn't last long there.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I did it about a year, worked with metastatic melanoma patients, still doing skin cancer screenings on patients who were in remission.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there was still a lot of derm involved, still a lot of biopsies, but uh, it was it was too much heartache.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I quickly went back to DERM straight.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that was great.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was great for both of us.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was great for both of us.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Mystica, what surprised you most about being business partners with me?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, pretty much that I don't want to kill you.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that was probably probably that probably surprised you the most too, that I haven't killed you yet, maybe.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm lovely to work with.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you're doing.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm lovely to work with.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, I think we don't butt heads really at all.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: We we tend to agree on just about everything.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't agree, I eventually get you to agree with me.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it works.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the beautiful thing is we have the very same perspective when it comes to treating patients.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: We I don't think we've ever truly disagreed.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's one time that that we kind of disagreed uh a very long time ago, but I'm pretty sure you've come about my way, and we're gonna talk about that in a later episode.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about it in a later episode.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So so I have a little note here, and it says, fun question.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Who is more stubborn?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm going to change that question for you.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Going in, who did you who did you think was more stubborn?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now who is more stubborn?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, our dad dad is way more stubborn than both of us.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: But between the two of us, I want you to be honest here.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: 100% me.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did you think you were more stubborn to start?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Did you think you were more stubborn?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or you thought I was gonna do that?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I definitely thought you were gonna be more stubborn, but you have learned that it's so much easier to just agree with me.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it works.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we can do this.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kidding.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kidding.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I don't I don't know that I can do this anymore.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um scalpel and skin is over.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't take it anymore.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, let's let's go in and talk a little bit about your story.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's do that a little bit more and then and then we'll we'll I'll tell you a little bit about myself too.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was aesthetics like when you first so 2000, we're going 2010, you can even go 11, 12.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what was it like then and what was it like now without going into, you know, like two, like just, you know, as in general.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I think about this a lot actually, because I remember back in 2010 when Dr.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obaji was training me and I was just shadowing her.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: I remember it was all about you, you you put filler in two areas.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: You put it in the lips or you put it in the nasolabial folds.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't putting it anywhere else.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: She was putting Botox in the forehead and frown lines, maybe a little in the crow's feet.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, it was also only derms and plastic surgeons who even did injections.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there were no med spas.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: There was no such thing as a med spa.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and so you had to go to a physician to get injectables.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that has changed dramatically now.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You had to go to physician office.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't, you know, Mystica, you could do it, nurse practitioners could do it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Even in the very beginning, though, I don't, I don't know.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean You couldn't do it?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I could no, I could do it legally.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I could reject.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I started to do that.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Started to do a consult with with Dr.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Abaji before you could do it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I can sit because as a PA, you can you can do a good faith exam, diagnose, and treat.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: However, I did get really she really wanted me to become very fluent in lasers first.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh which is the right thing to do for sure before I started injecting.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and quite honestly, I I would have been terrified if I had been a new grad and started injecting people.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, I don't hold on.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is a super important point.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That I think that right there is one of the the reasons we're doing this is because there's not a lot of fear in new people just going in and injecting, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Take a weekend course, right, you know, on and then on Monday they're injecting people.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the main reasons we're we're doing this, uh, this whole podcast.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that I that's a that's a super strong point right there.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember then I had been there maybe a year or so, and she she took an afternoon and she did hands-on training with me where I just injected the staff and they were getting it for free.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like, you know, if if Mystica messes up their face, too bad.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I remember her standing there training me, and I was definitely nervous.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I remember her saying, You you gotta just chill.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna get training like this anywhere else.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true because you couldn't get training anywhere.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was nowhere to get injectable training.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the other thing that's changed.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can go, there are courses all the time.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can get courses from the companies that provide the product.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can get courses, you can pay a lot of money and go to a course in LA or New York.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're everywhere.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're even in Pittsburgh.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: People do training courses.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not all of them are good.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, not all of them are good.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's funny though, still, every couple of weeks, a nurse or a PA or PA student or whatever will reach out to me on usually Instagram, sometimes Facebook or whatever, and say, hey, you know, can I come in and shadow you?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, some if somebody local, I I often will accommodate, but I I have handed off a lot of the injection duties to both you and uh shout out to Heather, my PA here at Labrasica Plastic Surgery.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we also have Eva, who is also wonderful.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have a we have a really great team.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're I feel super blessed to even when I'm not there directly in front of those guys, I feel very safe in their injecting skills.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I have we have the best injectors in Western Pennsylvania, if not all of Pennsylvania, uh at Skinlab.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're very picky, so I'm I'm all about quality.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're not just hiring anybody, they have to have a minimum three years experience.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: You go to a lot again, this is why we started this.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to a lot of med spas and find people who have been injecting for three weeks, and we won't touch anybody unless they've been injecting for years, and we can see some of their results too.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's super important because they have to fit the skin lab aesthetic.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Aesthetic.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do weird looking.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, uh, you I want to tell you a little bit about my story.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would like to hear your story, even though I know it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to hear it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: It I it actually some of it still gives me nightmares about how little sleep you got in residency.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was gonna go way back to the 70s.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna go back like almost 50 years here.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and my my story starts uh right here for those of you that can see it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh that's my grandma and my grandpa.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is LG the first, and my Graham Rose.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a tear.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't help it.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: You never, you've you've told it a hundred times, you still cry every time.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I was little, our parents, before Miss, this is before Mystica was born.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: She was born in the 80s.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in the 70s.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: My both of our parents worked, and my Graham Rose, she would take care of me during the day.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she was my buddy, she was my person.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: She was the one that that that looked after me.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And damn it, every time.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then it's uh in 1986.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry, sorry.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, whenever I was younger, she used to take my hand and put it in her hands, and she would put my hand in there, and she'd be like, Oh, LG, you have the you have the hands of a doctor, you need to be a doctor someday.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I would uh I would just say, Oh, okay, grandma, I'll I'll be a doctor.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I I didn't really, I didn't know anything about what a doctor was.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was five years old.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just knew that was a doctor that gave me uh shots.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was the guy that gave me shots in the in the office.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 1986, she gets melanoma, and she died.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she died just a few months later, Jill, July 6th, 1986.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So three days from now, it'll be the 40th anniversary.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was uh that was that was the day that my life changed because that was the I just I decided I was gonna be a doctor and I was gonna take care of patients, um, and and melanoma patients.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh way to start off the the uh the thing with me crying.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then I decided I was gonna become a doctor that day, and then fast forward to medical school and residency, and I decided I was gonna become a surgeon.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I had gotten into med or I had gotten into my residency and general surgery, and I needed, I wasn't really good at suturing back in 2003.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I took a really uh yeah, and two, I was a medical student.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't get to suture much as a medical student.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I always thought it came naturally.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing comes naturally, nothing in life comes naturally, okay?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Except my dashing good looks.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And your and your and your skills at rapping 80s.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: 80s.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we'll go into that one day.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I needed I did a rotation in plastic surgery, and I, you know, I saw like two things.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: One, plastic surgeons slept a lot better than general surgeons, and two, they treated melanoma.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I I mean I knew that, but I didn't know to the extent.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I um so I, you know, my plastic surgeons, we did several melanoma cases during that time.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know what?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I have to do, this is my calling, this is what I have to do.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: General surgery.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the history of medical training is four years of college, four years of medical school, and then residency.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And general surgery, residency is typically five years.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't make you a plastic surgeon, that makes you a general surgeon.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then plastic surgery is two or three, it's now three years.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: When I did, it was two years on top of that, five.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the next five years I spent hustling and working my butt off nonstop, day in, day out.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would do my general surgery cases and then I would run to another hospital or take a face call or hand call or whatever for the plastic surgeons so that I could get reps in plastic surgery to give myself a shot to become a plastic surgeon someday.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it paid off.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So after five years, I was accepted into plastic surgery residency at Henry Ford in Detroit.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Chow gave me the chance of a lifetime.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it was March 17th, it was St.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick's Day, 2010.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't you March 17th, 2008, I was accepted into plastic surgery residency.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wasn't there something that happened though, that you met with him one day and then you woke up the next day and you were like, I feel like I want to do that again?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and I did a week-long rotation with him in January of 2008.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was driving from York, Pennsylvania to uh Detroit.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was like seven hours or something, seven, eight hours, however long it was.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was driving on a Sunday, I started to get laryngitis.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I show up on Monday morning and I can't talk.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, I couldn't talk.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't, you know, I was allowed to do some minor operating.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm just a resident and it was, you know, plastic surgery pay uh patients.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't talk all week.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't answer any questions.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't really talk about myself.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do anything.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was Friday and I was done and and I was ready to go back.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I talked to my wife, Amy, and I I said, uh, I said, all right, I'll be home tomorrow.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, well, did you get it?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, I don't know.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I couldn't really talk this week.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Well, you need to go talk to him again.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What do you mean?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Don't come home uh until you've uh until you've got the spot.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked him Friday night.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Hey, can we meet for breakfast?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Dr.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Chow, right?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is Dr.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Chow, C-H-A-U.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh still in um Detroit, and he's an amazing, maybe the best liposuction surgeon I've ever seen.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's incredible.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I meet him for breakfast, and I got my cockiness back by then.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I say, hey, listen, this is I I know I was, you know, kind of sick this week, but uh, this is my spot.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have it?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, it's between you and you know, uh, and another guy.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Blah, blah, blah.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Here, what's his number?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Call him up on the phone, tell him that, you know, sorry, I got the spot.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't get it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wish him the best of luck.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Did you really do that?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I totally did that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I went all in.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I pushed my chips into the middle.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said, That's my spot.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I will never let you down, no matter what.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I will, I will deliver for you and I will make you proud.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he loved it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: He ate it up.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, every St.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick's Day, I call him on the phone and I say, you know, thank you for for giving me the opportunity to become a plastic surgeon every year.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: For I I, you know, I was still since 2011.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was you know nine, nine, six or nine months in at that time.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: 2011, 2008, right?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, he invited me in 2008.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had my my fellowship.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated in on June 30th, 2010.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the first time I called him was 2011.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I called him this year.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's only been one time I didn't get a hold of him, and I texted him that that year.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys talk every year on St.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Patrick's Day?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: We do.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you were when you were talking about your your journey through school, it made me think about how a lot of people don't know the difference between a plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to correct this in people maybe once a month.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um really?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very calm, a common misconception that a cosmetic surgeon is a plastic surgeon, but the track is completely different.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can be any type of doctor and then do a one-year cosmetic surgery fellowship.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: You don't even have to do that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: You don't even have to do the fellowship.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do that.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people will do, um, you know, they can do ER, you can do OBGYN, you can do whatever, and then you can um you can open up a, you know, hang a shingle and be like, I'm a cosmetic surgeon now.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there are residence residencies in cosmetic surgery.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So those are better, but they're not they're they're aesthetic surgery only.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's not it's not the same.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the same.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't do five years of general surgery.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are there are cosmetic surgeons who have done general surgery and then do uh cosmetic, uh, like a cosmetic surgery.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cosmetic year.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Fellowship, yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or whatever.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's, you know, the it's better, but you don't really know.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The way to tell is, hey, can you can you do a tummy tuck in a hospital?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, there's a there's a chance that that person is not a plastic surgeon.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually vice chief of surgery at our local uh biggest hospital.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I operate in multiple hospitals.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a surgery center.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I operate in New York City in a surgery center there as well.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm a board certified plastic surgeon.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have been for, you know, well over a decade now.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, that is a that is a difference.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you and you only require about four hours of sleep a night because that's that's how you're able to do all of those things.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel great in the morning.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the other night I had to operate uh into the night and I talked to Mystica in the morning, and uh yeah, I got like three hours sleep, and um she says, Well, how do you feel today?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I have this thing I always say to her, I'm like, I feel great.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and I went and I worked a 10-hour day after that, and she hates me every time.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I do because I need I need eight to nine hours to feel that's like two days' sleep for me.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it just it is what it is.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'd be scared of you on eight hours of sleep.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: There would be so much energy in the room.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh then add like a cup of coffee on that, and and you'd be doing cartwheels, literally.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I do cartwheels.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's videos of me doing cartwheels.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, let's let's wrap it up here a little bit now.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we kind of talked about it and we we talked about why we started this podcast, you know, but but Mystica, what do you think our listeners can expect lead like uh going forward here?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: This, you know, we you can expect a lot of tangents, first of all.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but like what can you expect?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do you want out of this podcast?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that one of the my biggest priorities would be break the stigma that cosmetic work, classic surgery, aesthetics, it makes you look fake because that is not a patient problem, that's a provider problem.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And two, there's there's so much out there now, it's very confusing for consumers, for patients to know what's legit, what isn't, what's worth investing in.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it's not worth investing in.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're both definitely no bullshit people.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you can expect the honest to God truth.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, we we kicked around names for this and before going with scalpel and skin um to designate me as a plastic surgeon, you as a uh cosmetic um dermatology uh PA.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and one of the things we talked about, is it worth it uh as a uh as a name?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and we decided, no, it's not gonna be the name because that it might not tell us enough, but it is going to be a theme moving forward for this podcast, is we're gonna talk about different treatments in each episode.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And are those treatments worth it?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're also gonna talk about it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's your phrase, I took it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about different um social media myths, the aesthetic industry as a whole, how it's changed, what we like, what we don't like, um, etc.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, you know, uh do you have anything to say before we wrap it up?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm super excited.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's I mean, let's get going.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I hope everyone, I hope we listen.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I hope people listen.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I hope people like it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Please continue, continue to listen, continue to watch.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is Scalpel and Skin.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Algia Labrasca, plastic surgeon, my sister, Mystica Labrasca cosmetic dermatology P.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have 16 years.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're siblings, we're business partners, and somehow we still like each other.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of Scalpel and Skin.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the show wherever you listen and come find us on social media.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Send us the treatments, trends, or questions you want us to break down next.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is Scalpel and Skin.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.