Feeling Whole Again — The Increasing Popularity Of Nipple Tattoos After Breast Cancer Surgery

While Tamara is so happy to be healthy again, she did feel a little bit incomplete after the surgery. A lot of breast cancer survivors these days are opting to get nipple tattoos — just to restore a sense of normalcy. In Tamara’s case, she said it made her feel like a woman again.

Tamara isn’t alone in feeling that nipple tattoos are that one step that can really make you feel better after surgery.

“Today, I get to finish this whole process and get restorative 3D areola nipples tattooed on,” Tamara said while at the office of medical tattoo artist Marnie Rustemeyer. “I came a long way, this was just really important to me … this final step will give me confidence, be more complete … it feels like this is the final piece of the puzzle.”

Marnie, a thyroid cancer survivor and breast cancer pre-vivor herself, said that her work allows her to give back to women who are just looking to feel whole again. It’s especially fulfilling for her because she’s been through it. “In August of 2013 I was diagnosed with the BRCA gene or breast cancer gene mutation,” Marnie told SurvivorNet. “I chose to have both my breasts and my ovaries removed.” After her mastectomy, she gave up a career on Wall Street and went into medical tattooing.

And Tamara is just one of many women Marnie has helped. As for Tamara, she was very pleased with the finished product. “I want everyone who has been through breast cancer to experience this,” she said. “They all deserve to look like they did.”

A woman named Jan Middleton, who recently got her nipples tattooed 13 years after her double mastectomy for breast cancer, says she also found a lot of comfort her new breasts. “I thought I was okay with it,” she said to News4SA about the time before she got the tattoos.

Yet, she also says she had moments where she didn’t quite know how to handle having no nipples, “Sometimes I thought about it, like, if I was going to a new doctor, when they open my top, should I warn them that there’s nothing there?”

“[My nipple area] was just clear, just skin, smooth, nothing there,” Jan described.

Eventually, she reached out to a nipple tattoo artist named Shannon Housley for help.

“I think I just put it away,” Jan said. “I just kind of put it away in my mind, and didn’t realize until almost 12 years later how much better it would make me feel to have that last step done.”

Shannon, her tattoo artist, expressed similar feelings about the process, “I think it’s the last step to gaining something back that was taken. You are not looking down and being reminded of all of the scars and the whole journey that they went through.”

 

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