Tattoos to Empower

‘Instead of a scar, I had a piece of art’: women on their post-mastectomy tattoos

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/22/instead-scar-piece-art-women-mastectomy-tattoos 1/9

Sat 22 Sep 2018 07.00 BST

Sarah B, Colchester

I found a hardening in my breast in 2005, and although my GP wasn’t concerned, he sent me to get it checked out. It was a total shock when I found out I had stage 2 breast cancer. I went for the mastectomy, because I thought it gave me a better chance; and I had a reconstruction because I thought it would be less traumatic to wake up with two breasts.

In 2012, I had a recurrence in the same breast. All the hard work they had done with the

reconstruction had to be taken out, and I had to have radiotherapy. Sometimes you cannot

have reconstruction after radiotherapy, because the skin thickens; but luckily I was fine. There has been a lot of surgery over the past 12 years. Deciding to have the tattoo done was an empowering act in itself. I worked with Julie from Flaming Gun in Colchester, and she was amazing. It has really boosted my confidence; I just love looking at my tattoo and wish I had done it earlier. The horror of what happened to me in those 12 years was written in the scars I saw every day: me as a survivor, but also the surgery, the chemotherapy and the nipple reconstruction. Every day I had to face the raw truth of what happened to me in the mirror. Now, my body art is something beautiful to look at.

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