Ink

Take a moment and watch this staggering piece of journalism, about an artist who tattoos nipples onto breast reconstructions.

This is so beautiful I cried.  I cried that thousands of women all over the world need these tattoos and they shouldn't have to need them, and that thousands should need them but don't because they don't survive.  I cried that he does them so perfectly, so professionally, and that he gets what he is giving them, he understands the gravity, the significance.  I cried because a personal friend with breast cancer was the one to share this story with me.

I've thought about tattoos quite a bit.  My first tattoos were unceremoniously applied as targeting measures for my radiation treatment.  I had imagined, were I ever brave enough to get one, that my first tattoo would be rather more whimsical and enchanting than those sinister blue dots, barely bigger than the point of a needle.  I thought perhaps I'd like to get a "real" tattoo to cover them up, as part of my mental healing, but they are awkwardly located.  One is on the cleavage side of the top of my right breast, the other on the base of my throat.  It's hard to imagine anything I would want to put in those particular places that wouldn't be a hundred times worse than my tiny blue unnoticeable (to everyone but me) dots.

Then there's my back.  Surely that's an expansive, available canvas, and a lot of it is numb so it's not like I would feel much pain getting something to cover up the large, pink centipede of flesh draped down my spine.  But there is always the risk of more surgery, and what would that do to whatever I try to cover it with?  I'd be left with a big mess.  So no tat there, either.  

Pink centipede.  Or weird unzipped flesh zipper. You decide.

Until now, very few have even seen that scar on my back, because I don't like to see it, or show it.  I hate the way it looks and what it means.  I hate to touch it, hate the way the center of it sinks in, unimpeded by muscle and bone that should get in the way but aren't there.  Hate how once, when I gingerly touched it during the months after surgery, I felt, through the thin, jelly like new scar tissue, the alien hardness of the spinal process protruding from the vertebra directly above my fusion.  Below that point, the spinal process, that ridge of bone that protrudes from the back of each vertebra in a smoothly overlapping armor to protect the spine, had been removed from the fused sections to allow for the surgical placement of the hardware and bone grafting materials.  So in addition to being visually alarming and ugly, the scar is also grotesque in a tactile way; it will never feel like a sinuous, seamless unit of muscle and bone again.  But most of all I hate that scar because it tells the story of having cancer, and my life turned upside down, a story that is carved into me with a scalpel like the clay tablets of ancient times. 

And before you get all silver linings on me, yes, I know it really doesn't look that ugly and yes, I know I could choose to see it as a symbol of my survival instead of a symbol of catastrophe.  But let's remember that it's my body that's been mutilated by this disease, it's my future at risk, and I'm allowed to sometimes view it for the ugliness it is.  Cancer patients are too often expected to stay positive and look on the bright side, and deny our rage and distaste for the changes in our bodies.  It sometimes feels like instead of being supported, we must support everyone else by keeping up our brave front and trying not to appear too sickly or upset.  Acknowledging the flaws as flawed doesn't mean we're wallowing, or giving up, or whining.  We can't be expected to wear the rose-colored glasses all the time, just because everyone else needs the reassurance that we're cheerful and upbeat.