Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Cancer and Tattoo's in the New Year
In the past, I've done a photo documentry dealing with a young cancer patient (which is why I keep my head shaved to this day to honor her memory) and, after reading a story in the paper, it's helped me with my decision on the tattoo thing. I'm getting one on the day of my birthday; Aug 13th.The big 4-0. You know when you pop a zit on your face, and the pain is intense, it'll either make your eyes water or sneeze? Well, when I turned 30, I tried piercing my nose only, it didn't work cause, when I got the ring in (I was drunk and was piercing it myself) it popped out when I sneezed. 40 will be tattoo. 50th? Hell I don't know. Prob go on a cruise. :))
I'll just have to narrow it down on what to get. I'd like to design something for the memory of both my Dad and oldest brother PeeWee. Deer antlers with a strip of 35mm film wrapped around it. The antlers cause they were both avid sportsmen (hunters) and the film for my love of photography and the yrs I put into it.
There's a story in this mornings paper abt a local woman who, has cancer and has a tattoo.
PS. Thanks Teresa for cutting your hair and donating it to Locks of Love.
Carrying the marks
Tattoo helps mother of 3 accept scars and pain of aggressive breast cancer
BY EMILY HAGEDORN, Californian staff writer
e-mail: ehagedorn@bakersfield.com | Friday, Jan 19 2007 8:55 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 19 2007 9:00 PM
The wide ribbon wraps around the back of Aimee Shaw's neck and crosses near where her breasts used to be.
More video from Bakersfield.com:
Photos:
Photo by Dan Ocampo
Aimee Shaw did not opt for reconstructive surgery following her double mastectomy, but instead chose a tattoo of a large breast cancer ribbon that wraps around her neck.
Photo by Dan Ocampo
Aimee Shaw has a large breast cancer ribbon that wraps around her neck, crosses her chest and falls to her waist.
Instead of solid pink, the tattoo is full of images, or metaphors, Shaw explained.
God's hands, blood coming from the wounds on his wrists, come down from her shoulders. A jungle scene takes over one end of the ribbon; an ocean is on the other.
"The jungle side is more about the 'fleshy' part ... my personality," said the 34-year-old northeast Bakersfield resident. "The ocean part is 'spiritual.'
"And you have the rhythm of the waves, kind of like going on and off of chemotherapy."
The mother of three is undergoing treatment for her second bout with inflammatory breast cancer, an extremely rare and aggressive cancer. Instead of reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy, Shaw chose a tattoo -- a pain that, unlike cancer, she chose and had control over, she said.
The tattoo doesn't hide her surgical scars, which is one of the things she likes about it.
"Sometimes women choose bilateral reconstruction because they want the 'world' to see and accept them as 'normal' women," Shaw said via e-mail. "For me personally, I could not pretend this never happened to me, and could not 'cover it up' by appearing to have perfect breasts."
Unlike other types of breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer, or IBC, doesn't usually produce the telltale lump.
Shaw thought something was wrong when she woke up one morning in 2003 and found an areola, the ring of darker skin around the nipple, swollen.
"I thought I had injured it somehow," said Shaw, a service coordinator at Kern Regional Center.
A couple of months later and after a round of antibiotics (physicians thought it was just an infection), Shaw finally received her diagnosis in May 2003.
Because it's so rare, the cancer is often misdiagnosed, Shaw said. IBC accounts for 1 percent to 5 percent of all breast cancer cases in the country, according to the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
It's also aggressive. The five-year median survival rate is about 40 percent, mainly due to delays in diagnosis, the lack of expertise and IBC's resistance to standard chemotherapy, according to the Web site for the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which has one of the only IBC clinics in the world.
Shaw underwent seven rounds of chemo, four drugs and then the double mastectomy.
And the tattoo.
After shopping around, she chose Outer Limits Tattoo and Body Piercing in Costa Mesa.
"It's like putting your insides on your outside," said Kody Cushman, Shaw's tattoo artist. "It (cancer) is a pretty big burden to carry around, but you're beautifying the experience."
Shaw's husband, Al, was hesitant at first but later warmed to the idea.
"Now it's not one big scar and nothing to show for it," he said.
About $2,000 and 20 hours under the needle later, the design had to come to a stop, with the bottom portion of the ocean side of the ribbon, still to be filled in.
Shaw, who had been in remission since March 2005, found out the cancer had spread to her ovaries and other lymph nodes in September.
She got a hysterectomy and went to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in October. She is now undergoing more treatment at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center on the Truxtun Extension.
Shaw hopes to go back under Cushman's needle once she's done with needles of chemo, whenever that may be.
Cancer has "deepened" her, Shaw said.
Shaw, who doesn't easily show or talk about pain, became more expressive with her feelings post-diagnosis, through art and writing, she said.
She proudly holds up a painting she did at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center of what she thought her cancer looks like. A dark circular mass is surrounded by a sea of blue. Lines of different colors and patterns radiate from the mass, representing her feelings about cancer, she said.
And along with the ribbon tattoo, she's gotten others.
Inspired by the 2004 movie "The Blue Butterfly," in which a terminally ill 10-year-old boy dreams of capturing the Blue Morpho butterfly, Shaw got three Blue Morpho butterflies on each foot.
"He returned home and found out he was miraculously cured," she said of the boy in the movie. "I wanted to wake up from my surgery last September, and in my anesthesia-induced delirium see those blue butterflies poking out of my hospital bed sheets."
I'll just have to narrow it down on what to get. I'd like to design something for the memory of both my Dad and oldest brother PeeWee. Deer antlers with a strip of 35mm film wrapped around it. The antlers cause they were both avid sportsmen (hunters) and the film for my love of photography and the yrs I put into it.
There's a story in this mornings paper abt a local woman who, has cancer and has a tattoo.
PS. Thanks Teresa for cutting your hair and donating it to Locks of Love.
Carrying the marks
Tattoo helps mother of 3 accept scars and pain of aggressive breast cancer
BY EMILY HAGEDORN, Californian staff writer
e-mail: ehagedorn@bakersfield.com | Friday, Jan 19 2007 8:55 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 19 2007 9:00 PM
The wide ribbon wraps around the back of Aimee Shaw's neck and crosses near where her breasts used to be.
More video from Bakersfield.com:
Photos:
Photo by Dan Ocampo
Aimee Shaw did not opt for reconstructive surgery following her double mastectomy, but instead chose a tattoo of a large breast cancer ribbon that wraps around her neck.
Photo by Dan Ocampo
Aimee Shaw has a large breast cancer ribbon that wraps around her neck, crosses her chest and falls to her waist.
Instead of solid pink, the tattoo is full of images, or metaphors, Shaw explained.
God's hands, blood coming from the wounds on his wrists, come down from her shoulders. A jungle scene takes over one end of the ribbon; an ocean is on the other.
"The jungle side is more about the 'fleshy' part ... my personality," said the 34-year-old northeast Bakersfield resident. "The ocean part is 'spiritual.'
"And you have the rhythm of the waves, kind of like going on and off of chemotherapy."
The mother of three is undergoing treatment for her second bout with inflammatory breast cancer, an extremely rare and aggressive cancer. Instead of reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy, Shaw chose a tattoo -- a pain that, unlike cancer, she chose and had control over, she said.
The tattoo doesn't hide her surgical scars, which is one of the things she likes about it.
"Sometimes women choose bilateral reconstruction because they want the 'world' to see and accept them as 'normal' women," Shaw said via e-mail. "For me personally, I could not pretend this never happened to me, and could not 'cover it up' by appearing to have perfect breasts."
Unlike other types of breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer, or IBC, doesn't usually produce the telltale lump.
Shaw thought something was wrong when she woke up one morning in 2003 and found an areola, the ring of darker skin around the nipple, swollen.
"I thought I had injured it somehow," said Shaw, a service coordinator at Kern Regional Center.
A couple of months later and after a round of antibiotics (physicians thought it was just an infection), Shaw finally received her diagnosis in May 2003.
Because it's so rare, the cancer is often misdiagnosed, Shaw said. IBC accounts for 1 percent to 5 percent of all breast cancer cases in the country, according to the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
It's also aggressive. The five-year median survival rate is about 40 percent, mainly due to delays in diagnosis, the lack of expertise and IBC's resistance to standard chemotherapy, according to the Web site for the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which has one of the only IBC clinics in the world.
Shaw underwent seven rounds of chemo, four drugs and then the double mastectomy.
And the tattoo.
After shopping around, she chose Outer Limits Tattoo and Body Piercing in Costa Mesa.
"It's like putting your insides on your outside," said Kody Cushman, Shaw's tattoo artist. "It (cancer) is a pretty big burden to carry around, but you're beautifying the experience."
Shaw's husband, Al, was hesitant at first but later warmed to the idea.
"Now it's not one big scar and nothing to show for it," he said.
About $2,000 and 20 hours under the needle later, the design had to come to a stop, with the bottom portion of the ocean side of the ribbon, still to be filled in.
Shaw, who had been in remission since March 2005, found out the cancer had spread to her ovaries and other lymph nodes in September.
She got a hysterectomy and went to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in October. She is now undergoing more treatment at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center on the Truxtun Extension.
Shaw hopes to go back under Cushman's needle once she's done with needles of chemo, whenever that may be.
Cancer has "deepened" her, Shaw said.
Shaw, who doesn't easily show or talk about pain, became more expressive with her feelings post-diagnosis, through art and writing, she said.
She proudly holds up a painting she did at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center of what she thought her cancer looks like. A dark circular mass is surrounded by a sea of blue. Lines of different colors and patterns radiate from the mass, representing her feelings about cancer, she said.
And along with the ribbon tattoo, she's gotten others.
Inspired by the 2004 movie "The Blue Butterfly," in which a terminally ill 10-year-old boy dreams of capturing the Blue Morpho butterfly, Shaw got three Blue Morpho butterflies on each foot.
"He returned home and found out he was miraculously cured," she said of the boy in the movie. "I wanted to wake up from my surgery last September, and in my anesthesia-induced delirium see those blue butterflies poking out of my hospital bed sheets."
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