A woman faces the restroom mirror. The scar slices the reconstructed left breast, spanning the width of it. The nipple is gone. Her left side is as smooth and unfeeling like a Barbie doll's. It doesn't look like part of her.
Cancer was no one's fault. But she thinks to sticking her iPhone in her own bra for safekeeping and wonders if that did it. She thinks about her grandmother who had a double mastectomy at 54 and wonders whether it was just in her blood. Could she have prevented all of this? Or was it only dependent on time before a routine annual revealed the small lump in her own left breast? She is more than her silhouette in a favorite dress. She is a lot more than what she has lost. She wants her life back, however, many days she just doesn't feel beautiful anymore.
Following a mastectomy, women-and a few men-face many roads to healing. Based on breastcancer.org, about 56 percent of ladies chose reconstruction, a procedure that may include 3D nipple reconstruction. Allowing the illusion of a nipple and areola is not as simple as choosing the right color; tattooing techniques used by most surgeons are notoriously prone to fading, and skin that has been irradiated (exposed to radiation) can be difficult to predict. Even the cleanest surgical job with minimal scarring can be ruined with a bad areola tattoo and many surgeons only do one color. The end result favors utility over beauty.
After their life is saved, a lot of women, healing in the trauma they've undergone, are left wanting a more realistic breast than their surgeons can provide. That's where tattoo artists part of.
\”Most of my clients have not had a tattoo before,\” Marie Sena explains. She works together with a good network of local oncologists, surgeons and breast surgeons who refer clients to her. \”A large amount of them are available in and say, 'Just assist me to get it back.'\”
Marie and her husband own Electric Eye, a tattoo shop on Jefferson Boulevard in Dallas. Tattoo sketches of pinup girls, flowers and Tasmanian devils pepper the brick walls. A fantastic number of medical renderings from the human body are on display, in the main waiting room and also the lofted nook. Up there, Marie sketches in a worktable as she listens to the calm, orchestral soundtrack from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Animal furs rest on tables. Unidentifiable embalmed objects float in jars through the window. It feels as if your building was once an old-time apothecary and they forgot to redecorate.
Marie has inked almost all of her skin, from soft gray roses on her behalf shoulder to some galloping, decorated horse on her behalf thigh. But her strangest tattoo needs to be the rudimentary pink shape on her leg. It's unmistakably a nipple-the first nipple she ever tattooed.
\”There wasn't any set path to do that; I needed to figure it out,\” she reminisces as she draws a breast on paper freehand. \”I did four practice ones before I done somebody that needed this sort of work because I didn't want to mess around. Used to do this little nipple on myself. My hubby has number two; a buddy has number three. I needed to know how you can get it done.
Marie is among many tattoo artists around the country who give a much-needed service for ladies after breast cancer.
\”My undergraduate degree is very obscure: Biological and Pre-medical Illustration. Basically, anything in the realm of scientific and natural illustrations,\” she laughs, \”but nobody will pay you to do that anymore.\” Her tiny class was asked to visit graduate school for medical illustration, which was how she ended up in Dallas at UT Southwestern Medical Center getting her master's degree.
\”Graduate school was basically the first two years of med school, just without the clinical stuff, in addition to illustration classes. There isn't a lot of room for error, because we're doing the illustrations which are instructing the public and medical professionals,\” she explains. Her first contracted gig like a medical illustrator was for OB/GYN textbooks. Certainly one of her advising doctors noticed that Marie's skillset was incredibly unique: a trained medical illustrator well-versed in clinical situations along with a tattoo artist. She suggested that Marie consider areola tattooing.
\”I started researching what goes on after reconstruction surgery. I had been very motivated to do something better for them.\”
Like a painting, an authentic areola tattoo is achieved by creating an illusion. Nipples are not one solid color. There is variation from body to body. Her hardest job is usually matching a reconstructed nipple to an untouched one, understanding how it will heal and how scarred and irradiated skin will hold the pigment. One client-an anomaly-came to Marie to repair an areola tattoo which was little better than a messy circle that bled within the edges in lurid, shiny pink.
\”A real nipple is a little redder compared to surrounding skin. I give a little shadow, just a little emphasis.\” She has taken areolas that appeared as if flat rubber baby bottle caps and tightened them up, adding shadow and depth of color, turning them into masterpieces marked with tiny, individual details. Marie sees it all.
\”I also do scar camouflage for ladies who have had flaps-if you don't have enough skin to recreate a breast, skin is obtained from elsewhere and grafted on. But if you've had radiation, there might be a huge color change.\” She shows me one picture of a client whose flap was radically paler than the remainder of her chest and extended up toward her collarbone. Over two treatments, Marie tattooed the whole breast before the scar was invisible, seamlessly blended.
Occasionally certainly one of her clients will pay it forward, covering the next woman who is available in. Marie describes it as being a magical, serendipitous experience every time. \”It's guaranteed that whenever someone pays it forward, the next person needs it. It saves their butts. Every time.\”
Insurance companies are supposed to cover these procedures but consider tattoos cosmetic. Frequently ladies have to battle to get their post-mastectomy procedures covered. They end up mired in legal wars after being drained emotionally and financially in a battle for his or her lives. Tattoo artists like Marie, around they may like to help, can't do every tattoo pro-bono or they won't be able to make a living. That's where nonprofits step in. P.ink.org, for instance, raises funds to pay for tattoo artists that do these procedures to ensure that ladies who have previously survived breast cancer could possibly get work done without a dime. P.ink's waiting list happens to be over 1,500.
Marie isn't only tattoo artist offering these services. Vinnie Myers is a well-known artist who travels with his team-he sends two team members to Dallas bimonthly-and has been doing funded procedures for a large number of women.
Local people have also found ways to support these women. Prosper-native Nate Mayberry, founding father of Seal the Deal tattoo cream along with a tattoo enthusiast himself, made funding these tattoos the primary mission of his business.
\”Maybe I was only a naive man, however i didn't really know very well what women undergo,\” Nate admits on the Little Pink Drink at Starbucks. His perspective changed when his sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had to possess a double mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery that included 3D nipple and areola tattooing. Her insurance company fought her all the way.
\”Maybe they need tattoos to pay for the scars, to feel whole and beautiful again-I can't speak on their behalf because I've never experienced it,\” he states. \”But my sister said she desired to seem like she would be a woman again. [Her tattoo] helped her start to heal.\”
By the time a client enters the tattooing chair, they have already won. The worst has ended. To Marie, her stage from the process may be the happy, healing stage. In terms of more elaborate breast tattoos, Marie sees many women who're self-conscious about extra scarring, or want to go nuts and get something beautiful to commemorate their survival. She shows us a sprig of purple and pink flowers that she painted triumphantly more than one woman's chest.
\”I more often than not do that free of charge basically can, because why don't you? They're already here. And a lot of them have not had a conventional tattoo before,\” she says. \”It's a thrilling experience for me personally too. They think badass. They come in just a little nervous, and they leave happy. We have a good time, and that i feel like I did something really good to assist this individual get their life back. It's not one size fits all,\” Marie explains. \”It's an area of expertise. It's the most essential thing That i have ever done.\”
Over the years, tattoos have become mainstream. They aren't related to gangs and violence but with personal expression: from the butterfly with an ankle to detailed sleeves that require decades of labor. For ladies who have had mastectomies, a realistic areola tattoo could make them feel whole. Sometimes a woman just wants to look like herself again.