- Hey y'all.
For those of y'all that knew me,
know my hair has been like this for about a month now.
The next morning,
you know we get them up for school.
My little girl said,
"Ma, you see how many views you have on this video?
Girl, you just went viral."
I'm sitting there like you know,
but can somebody tell what to do to get this out my head.
Hey, I'm Tessica Brown and this is I Went Viral.
(upbeat music)
When I do my hair I like to, you know,
finish it off with a little bit of got2b glue spray.
You know just to keep it in place.
When I went to use the spray, it was air.
Nothing but air came out.
You know, worse day of my life.
So now I'm around the house looking
for something else I can use
and when I ran past my refrigerator,
I seen the gorilla spray.
Well I didn't have anymore got2b glue spray, so I used this.
Gorilla glue spray.
Bad, bad, bad idea.
So I mean, I just thought,
you know I can spray this and by the time I come home
I can just wash it out.
But once I got home, it did not wash out.
My hair, it don't move.
You hear what I'm telling you?
It don't move.
We ran out of ideas.
I've washed my hair 15 times
and it don't move.
Stiff where?
Whoo.
We didn't know what else to do.
Like I waited a week before I even called my mama
and told her that my hair was stuck.
We exhausted like everything to do.
So that's the reason I went to social media,
for somebody out there to let me know,
you know what I can use to get it off my head.
Look, y'all.
Look, look you wipe it off and nothing happens.
Before I even posted the video,
I knew I was going to get you know backlash,
so I mean I was ready for it.
Bad, bad, bad idea.
Well listen the reason I went to the hospital,
because I started doing some of the things
that they told me on social media.
Then it just got worse.
Like it started getting sticky
but then the next day it'd be hard again.
The stuff y'all telling me to use is burn...
It was just like a whole nother situation.
So I'm like, you know what,
let me go to the emergency room and see what they say.
Got to the emergency room,
they brought me straight to the back.
She started with the, what is it?
Like the nail removal packs.
It burned so bad til my heart started beating too fast.
So she put some saline water on it.
She gave me five minutes.
She said, "Let's go again."
So I asked her is there any way you know,
you can give me the stuff and I can go home
and let my mom and my sisters do it?
Cause she's telling me we going
to be here for about 20 hours.
(bell tolls)
Yeah.
But still, even with my sisters and my mama, it burned.
It was gonna pretty much be
me getting this stuff out my head
to have a funeral cause I'm gonna have a heart attack.
When this first happen, my phone was crazy.
I took the phone, I threw the phone.
I'm done.
I had a hood, I put it over my head.
I'm done with the phone.
Well the phone started ringing,
my little girl brought me the phone.
I answered the phone, I'm not gonna lie,
with a big ole attitude, you know.
But it was Ms. Gina.
Ms. Gina is management.
And she said, "I see what's going on.
I can help you.
I can take over your emails.
You know, I can do all of this stuff for you."
This lady called me out of nowhere.
And again, I feel like she was sent
because at this point I was pretty much
on a verge of a nervous breakdown.
Because I mean it was really, really, really too much.
So then she called me, I think the next day,
and said she had a doctor out in California, Dr. Obeng,
that wants to do the procedure
and he wants to do it for free.
And that was it, I mean two days later I was on a plane.
When I got there first and foremost
he gave me the corona test.
He ended up having to give me,
I don't even know what it was,
but to calm my nerves cause I mean
I pretty much was all over the place.
And really and truly it was because
I just knew when I wake up I was gonna be like bald.
Like bald.
They brought me in the room, they put me to sleep.
He got it out.
When I woke up and I went to the mirror,
it pretty much was like Christmas morning.
I don't think people understand that
I couldn't touch the inside of my head.
And for me to be able to...
(Tessica sighs)
This man, Dr. Obeng,
he's another person that I feel like,
you know, was sent for me.
It don't move.
You hear what I'm telling you?
It don't move.
When I first went viral, like they're saying,
you know how many people was in my inbox?
Can you post this?
I'll give you $500.
Can you do this?
I'll give you this, I'll give you that.
Dude, I still got this stuff on my head and you...
If it was buying clout,
you know how many $500 I would have had.
And then they saying about the clout chasing,
I have the daycare, I have a dance team.
Go down in my social media and you can clearly see
I will give somebody the shirt off my back.
And everybody down here know that.
(upbeat music)
After we started reading everything that,
you know, could possible happen to my head,
pretty much I was gonna be you know bald.
Scalp damage and you know all kind of things.
So I was like you know,
we could start this GoFundMe fund,
well it was for $1500.
It exceeded way over the $1500.
I am donating $20,000 to Dr. Obeng's research
and the other $3000 I'm going to
bless three families down in St. Bernard Parish.
Listen, when it came to my hair,
I was the type of person that any type of flyaway,
I'm a spray it and blow dry it,
and make sure it's not going nowhere.
My little sisters, nobody want me to do their hair
because they know they gonna be there for a minute.
Like I have a serious problem with perfection.
But since this happened,
I'm to the point where I'm not
even getting relaxers no more.
I'm gonna do the natural,
I'm gonna do wigs.
But if I wouldn't have been so obsessed come to think,
with my hair, I would've left out here with a hat on.
I would've left out without the fly away.
I wouldn't have been that desperate
to find something in his house
to make my hair look good.
I'm not my hair.
I'm not gonna let my hair define me.
I'm not.
To go through everything I went through,
for my ponytail to stay in place,
it's really not that serious.
If people, you know,
only going look at your hair...
You have bigger issues than, you know,
your hair at this point.
(upbeat music)