Everyone has a story.
Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
The parents brought their child to the doctor. Not that kind of doctor. The six-year-old wasn’t sick, but she wasn’t well, either.
“She was very introverted,” the doctor remembered. “Withdrawn is a perfect word. She wouldn’t put her hair in a ponytail. She wanted to be a little cheerleader, but they had to wear ponytails, so she didn’t want to do cheerleading because of that.”
What could possibly cause this precious soul to have such low self-esteem at such a young age?
“She was a little girl with ears just poking way out…It was the first thing you saw — big ears.”
The doctor was a plastic surgeon, and a parent. He knew what was in the child’s future.
“Kids can be brutal on each other.”
The surgeon worked his magic. Snipping, pulling, folding, tucking. Upon seeing the child afterwards, he almost didn’t recognize her. It had nothing to do with her ears.
“She was alive. She was bubbly. She was smiling.”
So, whatever happened to the six-year-old with “big ears”?
“She’s now a social media influencer modeling clothes.”
Doctor Kenneth Sanders, one of our area’s best-known and most-respected facial plastic surgeons, told me that success story, and his story, during lunch at Bodacious Bar and Q in Shreveport. The restaurant is close to Dr. Sanders’ office, which allowed us to visit between patients. Dr. Sanders, who is health conscious and physically fit from working out several times a week, had a three-meat plate (brisket, sausage, pulled pork), and a club soda. I enjoyed a Cobb Salad with brisket, and water.
“Stuff like that gets to me sometimes,” Dr. Sanders said of the young girl’s operation. “Especially kids. Especially kids.”
Maybe that’s because Dr. Sanders thinks back to when he was a kid. One of two children, Dr. Sanders had a “different” childhood, growing up in Dallas-Ft. Worth after being born in Virginia. He didn’t want to be too specific about why things were so tough. Let’s just say his now-deceased father had extreme religious beliefs.
No television. No Christmas. No holiday celebrations.
Life was also a struggle financially, which Dr. Sanders used as motivation.
“I laid in bed saying, ‘I will never be here again.’”
The Sanders family eventually found their way to Louisiana – south Louisiana. Dr. Sanders was a good high school student in the subjects which lent themselves to the medical field. “Math and Science came really easy for me, so I didn’t have to work hard at that at all. I liked it, and just about everything I liked, I could learn quickly.”
With grants and scholarships, Dr. Sanders enrolled at LSU-Alexandria, before finishing at Louisiana College in Pineville. Knowing the price tag, that’s when Dr. Sanders put his medical school plans on hold.
“I looked at it, and I could go directly into nursing school right then and be done in a year—18 months. Back then, $50,000 a year (as a nurse) was a fortune to me. You can even work two days a week and support yourself in med school. That was my plan.”
So, Dr. Sanders earned a two-year nursing degree, while working as a bartender and convenience store clerk. He also worked as a nurse’s aide in a hospital emergency room, where he met his future wife, Lynn, who was already a nurse.
“She loves to say I started out as her student.”
Lynn convinced her beau to go back to school and take the classes needed to get into med school.
“You don’t want to get older and wish you would have done it,” Lynn told him.
Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport is where, while dissecting dead bodies, Dr. Sanders found an affinity for facial surgery.
“When I got to the head, face, and neck area, I just loved it. I really fell in love with it.”
After his residency and fellowship, Dr. Sanders planned to go into practice with an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor. Those plans changed when the ENT doctor was arrested.
“I don’t know how he found me, but Jim Elrod (then the Willis-Knighton Health CEO), called me. He said something like, ‘Don’t worry. I know you’re stressed out right now taking your board exams, and with what just happened. If you need us, you have a job with us.’ That was amazing to me. That was huge. I had never heard of him. I didn’t know who he was.”
Dr. Sanders accepted Elrod’s offer to practice ENT and plastic surgery.
“They didn’t tell me this, but I know (Willis-Knighton people) met later and said we will let him try, but he’s probably going to fail at the plastics, and we will have another ENT doctor. That obviously didn’t happen. We were profitable in just over a year . . . . I was shocked. They were shocked.”
After 12 years, Dr. Sanders left Willis-Knighton and opened his own practice. Dr. Sanders estimates he’s performed more than 5,200 surgeries.
“I think I was at the very tale end of (when plastic surgery was for) the rich and famous only. When I finished school was about when Botox was FDA-approved. That was a big deal. Fillers started coming on the market. The whole rejuvenation industry changed . . . . I was in on the infancy of rejuvenation for everyone.”
Dr. Sanders has done very well professionally, which means he has done very well financially. The good doctor doesn’t apologize for his lifestyle, which includes building his “dream home – a big house”, and driving a “fast” car, as well as driving race cars at tracks around the country.
“I had a low bar for success when I was a kid. For me, success was if you have a flat tire, it’s not an emergency. It’s not the end of the week. That’s how we lived when I was a kid. Putting in cents of gas. People dropping off food at my house. Success to me was I can feed my family. If the refrigerator breaks, it’s not an emergency. That’s all I really need, honestly.”
Assuming a lady – Dr. Sanders says 85 percent of his patients are women – was back at his office waiting on him to re-shape her nose or lift her brows, I asked Dr. Sanders my final question. As always, what is it about your story that might be inspirational to others?
Dr. Sanders gave a two-part answer.
*Hard work pays off. I’m a firm believer of that, in every aspect. Childrearing, your job, your marriage. Everything.
*You can’t change the past. Your past has made you what you are. I think we would be different people with a different past . . . . I guess if you’re at the bottom of the barrel, you can’t think that way. I don’t know. I’m not there. I’m very happy with every aspect (of my life).
Thanks to Dr. Sanders, that once six-year-old girl may very well say the same.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com