Tattoo artist is a key to post-mastectomy recovery

Tattoo artist is a key to post-mastectomy recovery
Article by: SlingerVille Staff
November 16, 2012

Penny Kurek, a breast cancer survivor, sat in the tattoo artist’s chair with her breasts exposed as she looked at them in the mirror.

"I've been cut on so much," she said. "I just want to feel like a woman again."

She sounded relieved, "I'm happy. This is the final step. I'm ready to move on with my life."

After stuffing her bra with washcloths for eight years, Penny is finally able to put this behind her. She has received reconstructed breasts, but there is no nipple, only scars from her double mastectomies. Now it is time for Penny to get the nipples she is missing by tattooing them on her breasts.

Going into a tattoo parlor was foreign to Penny, as she has never had a tattoo before.

After showing the artist her breasts, Vinnie took a peach-colored Sharpie and drew concentric circles where the areola and the nipple itself ought to be.

"This is the main thing that you do?" Penny asked him.

"Yep. Just nipples. No more Tasmanian devils for me."

Vinnie is 50 years old and began his career in Army boot camp, where he tattooed serpents on soldiers. Today, Vinnie is a master at tattooing the three-dimensional nipple. He tattoos about three women a day from all over the world. They have come from as far as Saudi Arabia and Brazil to his shop in Baltimore, according to Articles.Philly.com. Vinnie charges the women $400 for the tattoo and their insurance carriers sometimes pays for the service.

"His results are just so superior to what else we've seen, and I've seen nipples from all over the world," said Marisa Weiss, founder of BreastCancer.org and a radiation oncologist at Lankenau Hospital. Many area hospitals are now using tattoo artists.

Vinnie didn’t want to just tattoo something that sort of resembled a nipple; he wanted it to mimic a woman’s nipple right down the every last detail.

"The industry standard has always been draw a circle where the nipple should be and color it in," Vinnie said. "When I first started doing it, I said to myself: ''Why should I do a tattoo of a nipple and make it look like a pepperoni, when I can make it look like a nipple?' "

"Women have been through so much," Weiss says, "and then they make a big commitment to reconstruction, and if the nipple doesn't look good, it screws up the whole thing. It's hard to get a perfect result from reconstruction. But if you get a great nipple in the middle, it distracts the eye, which is very forgiving. It doesn't see the scars or imperfections, or little bulges; the eye goes to the nipple, and nipples rule. Definitely."

This is just what Penny and her husband were searching for.

"My husband encouraged me to come," she said of the man she met at 14 and married at 18. "He is the only one who will see me. He wanted me to feel more like myself."

After an hour of sitting in Vinnie’s chair, Penny was finished.

"Wow. That is amazing. It's been almost two years since I had a nipple. It's really incredible. It really makes the scar look less there."

Penny had thought in the past that breast cancer would end up taking her life, she had thought that if she survived, she would no longer have breasts and that she would no longer feel like a woman again. She proved herself wrong.

"It's incredible," she repeated.

"I'm going to go to Victoria's Secret and get a pretty bra."

"It's got to be see-through," said Vinnie.

"I feel complete again," she said. "Now I can feel like I'm done."

"You are," said Vinnie.

Source: http://articles.philly.com/2012-10-22/news/34629112_1_double-mastectomies-breast-cancer-marisa-weiss/5

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