00:02I think it's really common for clients to become somewhat emotional over the
00:06experience. At that point they've dealt with so much and this is kind of the
00:11last stop to making them feel whole again.
00:15Coping with the double mastectomy is a vein process that you don't really
00:20realize when you're fighting for your life. This is what you used to define
00:25yourself as and to have it taken away. You now have to fight to find that new
00:30balance of femininity and your identity. My name is Kim, I'm a breast cancer
00:36survivor and I'm getting 3D nipple tattooing. As part of the
00:40reconstruction they throw some color on to have semblance of the actual nipple
00:45but I want it to be something that's a little bit more in-depth. I'd rather go
00:50with an experienced tattoo artist. I don't know if it's gonna be such an extreme
00:54life-altering process or if this is just gonna be another small step or is this
00:58gonna be a huge factor. It's just something to really help get an identity back.
01:05I've been tattooing for about 25 years. I started in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The
01:10tattoo industry was a little bit different at that time. You know without
01:12the the advantage of social media you had to be well-versed in a lot of
01:16different styles just to make sure that you could pay your bills. My name is Shane
01:19Wallen. I'm the owner of Garnett Tattoo in San Diego, California. In
01:232012 I had the opportunity to work on a client who had been through breast cancer.
01:27I didn't really expect to have that experience have such a big effect on me
01:30but it really did. For me you know just being through a long family battle with
01:34cancer I related closely to that. It just changed how I felt about tattooing and
01:40what I could give back to other people and just just to elevate kind of what I
01:45was doing at the time. I was approached by a plastic surgery office wondering if I
01:49could do areola pigmentation. The principles are basically like just doing
01:53a small color portrait tattoos so you know those are skills that I just applied
01:57to to the areola pigmentation and I started getting really great results
02:01right away. I have clients come to see me from all over the world. They're either
02:05looking to reinvent themselves or possibly just get as close to where they
02:10were before they had the breast cancer experience. I have a consultation process
02:15where I ask them some questions as far as what they would like to see, maybe where
02:19they were at before they had breast cancer, what their original nipples looked
02:22like. From that point we'll make a few decisions based on on what kind of a shape
02:26the client's looking for, the size, the level of detail.
02:34I'll usually find like a good base tone that I consider to be somewhere in the
02:37middle and then I'll mix several colors on either end of that for
02:41highlights and shading. The anticipation is actually something that is a new world
02:46for me. How is it going to feel on the scar tissue? How is it going to feel where
02:50there's lack of nerve endings? Am I even going to feel anything?
03:00The majority of my clients have very limited sensation but some people do have a
03:03little bit of feeling and in that case I'll usually recommend a lidocaine gel to
03:07help ease the sensation a little bit.
03:35To the mastectomy client there was a lot of anxiety involved this in the
03:39and a lot more emotions it was important to set up a safe kind of a softer
03:46environment more of a one-on-one service and kind of a private experience
04:18it was my boy it really was just the amount of detail and the work that went into it I
04:26was
04:26probably over anticipating the pain factor ahead of time there is a lack of nerve receptors you
04:34know it made it a lot nicer than what I expected I think this takes me back to the person
04:40I was
04:40before it makes me feel good that I can just kind of be the the person who's just finishing up
04:45all
04:45the details for them it's really gratifying thank you for watching to see more videos click here to
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