Monday, December 16, 2013

Little Vinnies: Part II

A few months ago as I was getting ready for nipple reconstruction surgery, I started to mention a little something about nipple tattooing. Short story is, there's this interesting gent outside Baltimore who started tattooing while in the Army. One morning, he woke up and said to himself, "Self, what you need to do is tattoo nipples back on to ladies who don't have them no more." I'm not sure if that's exactly how the conversation went. But I feel like I'm not that far off. For the slightly longer story, try this ABC news segment from about a month ago.
Being all world-renowned and what-not, Vinnie books up fast. So when I called in early August to schedule with him, today was the first slot he had available. For anyone curious, his shop looks exactly like any other tattoo parlor I've ever been in. No, wait. This one had a pool table in the middle of the lobby area. And it was a lot cleaner. None-the-less, it was in a tiny strip-mall. Sandwiched between a veterinary office and a beer-alcohol-wine-tobacco shop.
Ahh...Maryland.
Vinnie explaining tattoo after-care procedures. Photo expertly cropped by Rob. (Yes, yes those *are* shark teeth in the background.)
And a post-tattoo photo with the artist himself.

Little Vinnies: Part I

Blogspot just kindly reminded me it's been the better part of 6 weeks since I've blogged. I feel like with most blogs that's really not such a big deal. I'm mean, c'mon. Sometimes you just don't have anything that friggin' exciting to write about. Or sometimes life gets in the way and you're too friggin' busy to sit down and write about how friggin' busy you are.  I'm going to claim the latter on this one. And trust me. Even though this is a blog about cancer - no news is almost definitely good news. Honestly, if I have something to b*tch and moan about, y'all be like the second or third to hear about it. You're in the top 5 for certain. 

So I could catch you up on the last 6 weeks worth of awesome. But even just thinking of everything we've been up to kinda makes me tired. I will say this, though. I just wrapped up my second-to-last-ever semester of grad school. There are no words for that 16 week suckfest. Don't get me wrong. The courses were amazing. I now know more about International Social Development than I ever thought I wanted to know. And now consider myself a burgeoning program evaluation guru. (Also, I use words like burgeoning. Correctly and everything.) But that was brutal. I'm talking, "I got a B" brutal. Yea. 

And I'm totally not blaming that "B" on stupid cancer or anything. But! I did have to go back in for another revision surgery during the semester. Of course the week of Thanksgiving - aka "the week before Finals" - was the most logical time to go in for surgery. Paper writing on pain meds... what could possibly go wrong???

Anyway, back to that surgery. On the right side, the inframmary fold had, well, kinda come unfolded. I"ll spare you any images and let you use your imagination (or Google!) on that one. Let's just say, one wasn't as perky as the other. So Dr. M went in and perked her right back up. Not for nothin' - he's used the same inframammary incision on that side 4 times now, and it still heals up like a champ every time. Which is really helping my "I'm part Wolverine" story.

<Side note for anyone who is a) intollerant to morphine, and b) will be in need of morphine any time in the near future. My stomach is always at odds whenever the two happen to meet. To prevent the throw down (in which I inevitably throw up) the lovely hospital folk give me some anti-medics. One of which, this time, was a scopolamine patch to wear behind my ear for 48 hours. And it worked great! I would, however, have appreciated a word of warning that it could, might possibly make my vision blurry. Temporary side-effect that went away within 48 hours of removing the patch. But c'mon - you gotta warn a girl!

Now I realize I've rambled on-and-on and have gotten no where near to the subject line of this post. Yup... looks like this was meant to be a two-parter. Stand by for the sequel, Little Vinnies: Part II. Which hopefully will not take another 6 weeks. I make no promises.