When Life Hands You Lemons…Turn Them into Easter Eggs!

Yah. Paint those effing lemons!

So here’s a little discovery along those lines: You can cover up your mastectomy scars with TATTS!

Yes. Tattoos, and we don’t mean fake areolas. We mean extravagant, baroque, surrealistic, and truly wonderful artwork that turns something you’d just as soon not look at in the mirror into a delight.

Check out this marvelous “sleeve” that grows into a spectacular vine:

This lady has a reconstruction, and a pretty darned good one, too. Looks mighty convincing, assuming you think women’s breasts should be bulbous, as in the shape of  grapefruit. Nevertheless, even a very good reconstruction can leave you with some nasty scars. The tattoo, with its wonderful organic structure, distracts from the artificialiaty of the reconstruction job and in fact takes advantage of it. If there were any scars there, the artwork covers it exquisitely. To die for!

Here’s one, by the same artist, Vyvyn Lazonga, that appears to be over a no-reconstruction job, covering the straight, flat scar that results when the woman is rather slender and the surgeon is skilled

Now that, I could stand to look at in the morning. Or at any time of day.

For the reconstructed set, look at what the same artist did for this poor soul:

One of the things docs don’t always make clear to women is that autologous reconstruction — wherein blobs of flesh are ripped out of other parts of your body and hung on your chest to create fake boobs — is violent, destructive surgery that leaves you with scars from terrific wounds on your belly, back, fanny, or thighs. This is the “before” shot:

Here’s another very successful and appealing decoration of an unreconstructed mastectomy:

Personally, I decided to elect a double mastectomy so as to avoid becoming lopsided — out of concern about effects on posture and hoping to avoid aggravating the chronic back pain. But as a matter of fact, a design like this could overcome at least one of those concerns.

Here’s my kinda woman:

She looks like she’s close to my age, and she’s not afraid of anything. Don’t you love it?! That gecko is as perfect as perfect can get. And she looks great.

There are many more to be seen at Oddee.com and at SheKnows.com. Also — wouldn’cha know? — there’s an app for that.

From what I understand, before getting a boob tatt you need to wait a year or two after the surgery, to be sure the incisions are fully healed and everything has settled down.

Besides finding an artist who can actually do these amazing things (how to find her?), your main concern with choosing a tattoo is to address the risk of infection. The inks are injected into your skin, through the epidermis (the outer part that sheds or peels off when you get a mild sunburn) and into the dermis. Obviously, that procedure poses some risk of transferring pathogens, whether bacterial skin infections or hepatitis, a potentially lethal viral infection.

However, there are ways to maximize safety. The Mayo gives you quite an earful on the subject, plenty of useful guidelines on that site. Consumer Reports advises on what to look for and how to insure the safest procedure. The FDA, not surprisingly, inveighs against the practice, but the Washington Post reports that by and large it’s considered reasonably safe.

But if you’re scared — or just not so sure how it would look — you can get fake, temporary tattoos. Obviously, these are not going to be as gorgeous as the real thing custom-designed by an in-the-flesh (heh!) artist. But they could at least give you a clue about how a real tatt would work on your particular body.

Images:

Pink sleeve and vine: Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Ad Agency Jumps on Tattoo Bandwagon
Morning glories over flat scar, Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Vine around the belly, Vyvyn Lazonga (I think–apologies if this is wrong), found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Pre-vine belly: ibid.
Flower and vine over single mastectomy: Found at Tattoo Road Trip via Fifteen Most Amazing Mastectomy Tattoos — sorry, I can’t find the artist’s name at either site.
Grand lizard: Jane Fox, found at Tattooists Turn Scars into Butterflies; again, no artist’s name seems to be provided, at least not that I can find.