NIPPLE TATTOOS CAN MARK THE END OF YOUR BREAST CANCER JOURNEY

Your breast cancer diagnosis is the beginning of a long journey. Your journey can lead you into some of the darkest and most frightening situations you have ever had to deal with, situations which require all your inner strength and courage. 

Cancer cruelly tests the strength and courage of the strongest person and at the end of the day, even with wonderful family support, it’s a journey you must travel alone… 

The treatment is arduous and takes a toll on your mental and physical health. Once you have dealt mentally with diagnosis, another hurdle lies in your path, the choice of whether or not to have reconstructive surgery. 

Reconstruction techniques have come forward leaps and bounds in recent years and talented surgeons can recreate your breasts with amazing skill, using a variety of complex techniques to replicate the shape and profile of a natural contour. Sadly, though, surgery often means that you have to lose your natural nipple along with your breast tissue in order to make sure that cancer doesn’t return. 

However perfect the shape of the reconstructed breast is, the lack of a nipple can make your breast feel unnatural and not a part of you. 

As women, we identify closely with our breasts and when these are taken away or dramatically altered this can be disorientating and make you feel that you have lost some part of your soul and spirit too… 

When you catch a quick glimpse of yourself as you walk past a mirror, without a nipple you may feel dissociated and that you don’t recognise your own body anymore. Little wonder that at the end of this long, dark and arduous trek, you may feel that you just want to “feel like me again” and put everything behind you. 

How can you move forward with your life and complete your cancer journey? 

Permanent Nipple Tattoos can help… 

 

WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR RECREATING YOUR NIPPLES AFTER MASTECTOMY?

Reconstructive surgery has taken huge steps in recent years. Post-mastectomy, new techniques allow surgeons to create incredible new breasts, often using your own tissue rather than implants. The results are amazing and allow you to rebuild your confidence and body image after fighting cancer, an incredibly important step on the journey to recovery. 

However, at the end of this journey is the finishing touch, the nipple and areola complex. 

During the majority of life-saving mastectomy surgery, it’s impossible to keep your nipple and it must be removed with other breast tissue. If a new breast shape is created it will only replace the shape of the breast and not the nipple and areola structure. 

Your options up to this point have been limited… 

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SURGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF YOUR NIPPLE. 

Surgeons can create a bump on the breast out of your own skin to replicate a nipple. However, over time the bump will generally flatten back down into the breast so the procedure may need to be repeated.

 The areola skin around the nipple will still need to be coloured by tattooing to give the correct appearance. Nipple Tattooing can really help here to give a more natural appearance.#

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PERMANENT NIPPLE TATTOOS. A NEW OPTION AFTER BREAST CANCER. 

As a professional tattooist and a woman, I felt that people were nearing the end of their cancer journey and then being offered less than optimal choices. I wanted to be able to offer something more. I felt that there should be a better, higher quality permanent option to enable you to get as close as possible to your body before surgery, to reclaim your body confidence, restore your spirit and put cancer behind you. 

 

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WHEN PERMANENT ISN’T PERMANENT

To add to the confusion, cosmetic tattooists often refer to their pigments as permanent {as in Permanent Cosmetics}, even though they are designed to fade away slowly. This refers to the fact that they last longer than daily applied cosmetics. However, they are not permanent in the generally understood use of the term.

Likewise, cosmetic tattooists lack the experience and artistic background to do this delicate and important work. Their equipment is designed to create fine hairs on eyebrows, lip liner etc. It’s important to use the right equipment to tattoo breast tissue which may be scarred and fragile and to have experience of working with such delicate skin. 

The results are often less than ideal. This is a huge shame when you have come so far on your recovery journey. The nipple should be the final piece of the puzzle. The cherry on the cupcake to make surgery complete. 

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If you’re unhappy with the way your areola looks, or for any reason do not have an areola any more, we can help. We work with:

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• Cancer survivors, both single and double mastectomy

• Men and women who have undergone surgery

• Those who have had breast augmentation and have been left with unsightly scars

• People undergoing gender reassignment surgery

• Those with skin conditions such as vitiligo which discolours the areola

• Men and women who have irregular, asymmetrical or undefined areola

• People who have had any other type of breast surgery