The Tattoo Experience

I don't want to be all "oh my Lord it hurt so bad" and ruin business for tattoo artists out there..but still...oh my Lord it hurt so bad.

Steve says it was 2 1/2 hours.  2 1/2 hours of needle-y torture.  I'm told after the fact by many people that the stomach/side/rib area of the body is one of the worst. Thanks! Good to know!

So he started in with the outline - which took the longest and hurt the worst.  I had come to terms with the fact that it would be uncomfortable and would sting, etc...  The night before, on LA Ink, there was this moron getting a stupid tattoo, and saying that it felt like dull hot razors slicing him to the bone.  We laughed, because, you know, he's a tool.

Well well well...turns out the tool and I share similar nerve endings... because that's exactly what most of the outline felt like. There were definitely parts of it that hurt more than others - the part more to my rib side hurt more than to my belly button side...and the parts actually on the rib bones hurt a lot too...

The rose part was particularly painful b/c of location - he mentioned "isn't she the kid that gives you a hard time?"

great. symbolism becoming reality.

the larger of the 2 birds hurt like hell...so i've decided it can symbolize my first miscarriage, which was much worse than my second one.

He was really good about letting me take little breaks as I needed them. I didn't cry. I didn't groan or scream.

I did however do a lot of toe-curling and grimacing.

Also, a lot of hand squeezing to Steve...like really serious "hey, don't dislocate my thumb" kind of squeezing.  In addition, Steve was warned to be ornery-free during the tattoo. At one point, he tried to be ornery, and there was a lot of arm flapping on my part, and a perhaps slightly hysterical tone to my voice until he cut it out. Post-tattoo, you can be assured we were back into normal ornery mode.

I think there's something about how you breathe through the pain - and I couldn't always get my breath synchronized going the right way. Sometimes that worked really well...but I think part of the reason why the outline was so painful for me was b/c he was working in longer strokes - so it was hard to focus on it...the black fill-in and the shading were shorter more localized strokes, so it was easier to focus on it. That's my theory anyway.

At one point, it was mentioned by those in attendance that I wouldn't remember the pain after the fact.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I pointed out that I still remember what it felt like to have kidney stones..."but that's an internal pain"...ok...I remember what it felt like to have a catheter inserted with no drugs...and I remember what it felt like to have an amniocentesis...so...I'm guessing I can look back on this experience and remember the dull hot razor cutting to my bone feeling.

At another point, I exclaimed "I'm endorphin-less!"  You always hear (or I do anyway) about people who endure pain because the endorphins kick in, and they end up enjoying it. Nope. no endorphins here. nothing.

A lot of you have mentioned how "tough" I am...but most of you saying that are the ones that have had natural birth.  I'm sure your natural birth experience, however pleasant it might have been, was much worse than getting a tattoo ;)  The outcome is perhaps not the same, but definitely no comparison on the pain scale.

So I put my tattoo on the scale of less than kidney stones and greater than amniocentesis.

All seems to be healing nicely...