What happened to Baylen Dupree’s sister Sammi’s throat?

Once upon a time, Baylen Dupree went viral for her TikTok videos talking about her life with Tourette’s syndrome. Today, she has a reality show on TLC titled Baylen Out Loud.

The TLC show premiered on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025, and introduced us to a set of key personalities in Baylen’s life, including her younger sister Sammi Dupree. While Sammi seems to be the lowkey sibling of the bunch, a scar on her neck has piqued viewers’ curiosity.

Sammi, the private Dupree sister

19-year-old Sammi Dupree is the third of the six Dupree kids: Burke, Baylen, Sammi, Sven, Vick, and Bechnir. However, unlike the other Dupree kids, Sammi does not stay in the family’s West Virginia home. Instead, she lives with her boyfriend, who their father Allen has revealed to be a Kansas resident. 

In episode 1 of the show, Sammi and her other siblings make a few confessions about what their experiences were like growing up with Baylen’s disability. 

I think it put a little bit of a strain, honestly, on our relationships with like, mom and dad…The doctor’s appointments, all the ‘I can’t go there because I don’t want your sister to be left at home alone’ or ‘I don’t want…’ You know what I mean?…I think it definitely had a little bit of a strain on all of us with mom and dad.

All of this difficulty seems to have led to no resentment between the sisters, however. In fact, they have been shown to be the closest of the Dupree bunch.

What’s the scar on Baylen Dupree’s neck?

After episode 2, a viewer posted a close-up picture of Sammi Dupree on a Baylen Dupree Facebook Fan page. It was captioned “After seeing episode 2, can someone tell me how Baylen’s sister got that scar on her neck?” The close-up picture was also edited with an arrow pointing to the scar at the base of Sammi’s neck. One of the top comments read: “Looks like none of our business.” Variations of this sentiment were repeated throughout the comment section.

Others argued that it was okay to be curious about such things, adding that Sammi Dupree probably would not have agreed to be on reality television if she wanted no one commenting on her life or wellbeing.

Nonetheless, for the curious, opinions varied between it being a scar from a tracheostomy, or a thyroid or parathyroid surgery. A tracheostomy scar is the scar left after a tracheostomy, where a breathing tube is placed in the tracheal passage. These responses were disproved by many who replied that tracheostomy scars looked more like indentations, than the flat scars in the picture.

Some commenters disagreed with these opinions, stating that thyroid surgery scars are quite thin, and tend to disappear very quickly. These were then rebuffed by commenters who stated that thyroid and parathyroid surgeries rarely left scars. Instead, they sometimes left keloids. A keloid scar is a type of raised scar that grows larger than the initial wound, forming months to a year after the initial injury that caused it. Moreover, a keloid scar doesn’t fade over time.

Regardless of where she got the scar, there is little doubt about Sammi Dupree’s health. The 19-year-old is happy and surrounded by her family’s love and acceptance. Also, she’s mostly staying away from the public eye, as she has long made her Instagram page private.