When I shaved my head the first time, for kids cancer, I thought I would celebrate by getting a tattoo of a shamrock of the Celtic knot kind. Alas...I dragged my feet and never went to get it.
Then my pal Jenna brought up that she wanted a tatt, turning 50, it would be her permanent milestone. Excitedly I said I would like to honor my own promise and get one after this St. Baldrick's, "Why don't you wait till you shave your head with me, then we will both go and get a tattoo!"
Marvelous plan.
I had found a different shamrock, a lil less detailed and a lil more tribal and I loved it. So did Jenna. So did LTR. Three leaves - three pals - marking a moment in our lives.
It all worked out quite nice. It was a bit more painful than the last. But the last was 13 years ago and it's the "kind of pain you forget", and I have to agree. But 15-20 minutes later, I was a marked woman with a $32,000 tattoo (if you total both times I shaved my head) at my collar line.
"Put A&D ointment on it 5-6 times a day. Take off the gauze and let it breath. Keep it out of the hot shower stream.......blah blah blah.
The 3 inked women stopped at the local Rite-Aide on the way home to get ointment. We found the generic brand of what we thought was the right stuff. We sat around the dinner table, drinking wine and sharing pain levels, as all of us had a different location marked that day.
Next day, at work, armed with my ointment, I started smearing. Then the itching began. Then the rash developed. Then my lymph node popped out of my neck like a T-day turkey timer! That doesn't happen very often, but when it does...there is infection in my body. It didn't take a medical degree to figure out where it entered my body.
A couple nights later, I stood talking to a friend in the mall, my collar rubbing on my weepy tatt, the itching searing down my back. I felt like a crazed junkie, bugs crawling down my shirt, twitching and adjusting my collar, seeking relief.
The next morning the redness around the tattoo spread out to a bumpy, burning halo of unhappy skin!
"Dry it out with alcohol." my tattooist suggested.
"Looks like shingles." my chiropractor mused.
"Have you had chicken pox?" a co-worker volunteered.
"Oh dude! That's not cool." a close friend helpfully suggested.
Cortisone, Benedryl, alcohol swabs and gauze the size of beach towels...I type to you, shifting and squirming in my chair, begging for relief.
"Don't swear, don't drink, don't lie and never get a tattoo."......Mom is always right.
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