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Delayed Reconstruction Questions about Delayed Breast Reconstruction. |
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| 10/31/2009 | I recently found out that I have breast cancer and your site has been an incredibly valuable source of information. I don't have a question. I am actually writing to pass on information. I am 45 yrs old and have been a tattoo artist for 14 years. I know the medical profession tends to view us as a bunch of uneducated knuckle scraping neanderthals, so I will throw in that before becoming a tattoo artist, I was a certified public accountant. Over the years, I have had to re-do nipple tattoos done by many plastic surgeons and from the info on this website it is very obvious why. You go in way too soon. The skin just isn't ready for that much trauma after only 12 weeks. I generally tell people to wait a year to go over scar tissue. Going in to soon can cause more scar tissue and make it harder for the skin to ever take ink. I know women want to get back to "normal" as soon as possible (I certainly do) and getting them to wait longer would be difficult. I also read one post that said you advise people to leave the tattoo bandaged for a week. That almost guarantees a poor result. You also tell people not to go to a real tattoo shop because we use ink with lead in it and this will interfere with mri's. That is absolutely ridiculous! There is no lead in tattoo ink and the (mostly) myths concerning mri's and tattoos have to do with a very few reported cases of people who felt a mild burning sensation in the area of their tattoo. This was attributed to iron oxide that was used 20+ years ago in ink and I could not find any allegations of the ink interfering with test results. I have had an mri myself as have many of my heavily tattooed, now middle aged friends and no one has ever had the slightest problem or had a doctor mention any difficulties in reading the tests. I suspect most of this is about old conceptions of who gets and who does tattoos and that they are associated with disease transmission. If you check with the cdc, you will find this is rarely the case. My industry cleaned itself up a long time ago. This is a very highly paid profession and most of us take great pride in doing our best job artistically, but also being absolutely professional and protecting the health of our clients. In many healthcare settings, the responsibility of following a sterile chain of events is delegated to people who get paid little more than minimum wage. I find that terrifying. I bill out at $150. Ethics and conscience aside, I wouldn't risk the goose that lays the golden egg to cut corners anywhere. | ||
| Replied | JHU's Breast Center Reply | ||
| 11/1/2009 | we aren't allowed to post email addresses on the site so you might want to consider creating a website so people can find you when they do an internet search for tattoo info. Actually, the reason why tattoos done by the doctor/nurse practitioner fade is because they are organic substances. we aren't allowed to use the tattoo substances that you use in your shop. It has been many years like this and just in the last 6 months more doctors are getting comfortable with women going to tattoo artists for their nipple and areola tattooing. | ||
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