Who is Michael K Obeng? Meet Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who could fix Gorilla Glue girl Tessica Brown's hair
Louisiana woman Tessica Brown, dubbed Gorilla Glue girl by the internet, took to Instagram to announce that she will now travel to Los Angeles to meet with a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who claims that he can remove the glue from her head once and for all. The announcement came after her failed meeting with a hairdresser who hacked off her ponytail. Dr Michael K Obeng has stepped into the sticky situation and offered to de-glue her hair with a medical-grade glue dissolver, although he believes the process could take up to three days.
According to TMZ, the procedure would ordinarily cost a staggering $12,500. Though Brown has already raised nearly $14,500 via a GoFundMe drive – nearly 10 times her initial goal of $1,500 – Dr Obeng has decided to do the procedure for free.
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Who is Dr Michael Obeng?
Dr Michael K Obeng is a Ghanaian American plastic surgeon who currently practices in Beverly Hills, California, and is affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is the director of MiKO Plastic Surgery and MiKO Surgery Centre in Beverly Hills. Philanthropy is not out of character for Obeng, who helms the Foundation for Reconstructive Surgery called R.E.S.T.O.R.E., which stands for Restoring Emotional Stability Through Outstanding Reconstructive Efforts. Restore, founded in 2008, brings reconstructive surgery to developing countries where it is not normally available. Restore won Obeng the 2013 NAACP Humanitarian Award. The initiative has successfully completed at least 500 surgeries since its inception, and its founder has donated more than $300,000 to the cause.
Born in poverty in Ghana, Obeng is a man of humble beginnings, who from an early age felt compelled to help those less fortunate. “Growing up in Ghana, I witnessed disease, illness, and disfigurements be attributed to supernatural forces such as witchcraft,” says Obeng in a Zwivel interview. “Kids with deformities were ridiculed so much. Their parents would hide them because they would be made fun of.” At the age of 15, he met medical professionals from nonprofit medical organization Operation Smile, who provided scar revision therapy to a neighbor whose husband had thrown acid on her face.
“That, coupled with the premature death of my mother and grandmother due to complications of decubitus ulcer, propelled me to seek a career as a physician and a plastic surgeon, and ultimately inspired me to start this much needed philanthropic organization to educate and heal those in need," said Obeng.
After immigrating to the United States at the age of 20 with less than $200, Obeng completed his medical and surgical training at Harvard University. He went on to perform the first immediate breast reconstruction using abdominal tissue in Ghana, after reading an article on breast cancer in Ghanaian women, which cited a mortality rate of 17-24%. “Most of these women would rather die of the disease than lose a husband or boyfriend who will never view them as ‘whole’ if they underwent a mastectomy without reconstruction," said Obeng, who also taught two local plastic surgeons how to perform the operation.
Dr Obeng said that he believes he can remove the heady concoction of urethane prepolymer, diphenylmethane-diisocyanate, isomers and homologues off Brown's hair using medical-grade glue remover.
