I got inked

Just a short post here as I wanted to share the fact that I finally did it.  I now have a tattoo that isn't a test of me getting a tattoo or a drunken adventure.  I mentioned way back here in June of last year that I wanted to get a tattoo.  That was when I got a 'test' tattoo of a camera aperture (Aperture Science!) on my chest.


Thinking about it afterward, I realized that this wasn't any sudden desire to get inked.  I can recall wanting to get a tattoo back in High School.  Back then it was going to be a snake starting in my palm and curving around my hand, wrist, forearm, bicep, and ending on my shoulder.  Considering that snakes are representative of healing, that does make my career into nursing a little more fitting.... even if I'm shoe horning that meaning in!

Anywho, since I liked the test tat, I've been considering what to get, where to get it on my body, and where to get it done at.

The what seemed obvious.  It combined my long time idea of getting a snake with my current (and probable final) career of nursing.  The Rod of Asclepius.  Now, I've had other people ask me why I'm not getting the caduceus as that's the symbol of nursing.  Well, I don't agree that the cadeceus is the symbol of nursing.  Here's, briefly, what I've learned about the twin winged snakes of nursing.

The cadeceus is the staff of hermes.  Hermes was a greek god and the lord of trade, heraldry, merchants, commerce, roads, thieves, trickery, sports, travelers, and athletes.  You'll notice that none of those are nursing, medicine, or healing in general.  How did this come to represent nursing in particular and medicine in general?  Someone made a mistake.

Seriously.  Someone fucked up and no one has taken the time and effort to fix it.  The reason that two winged snake staff is the symbol of nursing is that it looks similar to the Rod of Asclepius which is a single snake winding around a rod.  It was carried by the greek god of medicine.  It's even in his family line as Asclepius has two daughters; Hygieia (Goddess of hygine), Iaso (Goddess of recuperating), Aceso (Goddess of the healing process), Aegle (Goddess of the glow of good health), Panacea (Goddess of remedy).

So, on one hand you have the true Greek God of healing and on the other you have the Greek God of messengers, tricksters, and thiefs.  One had a rod with a snake going around it, while the other carried a staff with two snakes and wings.

Which do you think should represent medical practitioners, medicine, healing, and nursing?  And what yahoo made this mistake?  From what I've read, the cadeceus was first used to represent medicine in the 1902 a captain in the US Army Medical Corps did.  It was adopted and the error wasn't found out for several years.  By then, many organizations had followed the US Army Medical Corps and was using the damned cadeceus as the symbol of medicine.

Thanks US Army Medical Corps!

So, I'm not a fan of the cadeceus.  To be honest, I didn't like it before I knew it was outright wrong as I didn't like the wings.  After my research I was damned well not going to put that erroneous symbol on my body in permanent ink.

Now, if you do a Google image search of Rod of Asclepius, you'll not only get the damned cadecus, you'll also get a lot of fairly dull representations.  I mean, a snake should be cool right?  And if I'm not only representing my career in nursing but my career in correctional nursing, I'd like it to be a little more sinister.  A little more cool.  The best one I found was the image to the lower left.  I took it into photoshop and tried to make it better, but that's just not the type of artist I am.

I figured the way the rod itself was represented it matched corrections as it looks almost like a bar in the prison.  I liked it enough that my first 'test' of using it was on my Zippo lighter.  I repeated the 'rod' portion of it to make it more obvious that it was bars and as you can see below, it looks pretty cool!  At least on a Zippo.

Anyway, even though my design skills are a little lacking, I'd hopefully be going to an artist.  I figured I'd ask them to make something along these lines and if I didn't like it, I could always just go with the symbol I had.

I made a couple variations of this one online with the snake in black and the rod just outlined, the rod in black and the snake outlined, and even all of it outlined.  I then asked my facebook friends to let me know which one they liked best.  One surprising result was the friend I made while down in Mexico as he bypassed all my variations and suggested the image below that's a Rod of Asclepius if the Rod were a Dagger.  While I didn't like the specific image style (the 'realistic' snake vs just a black snake), I certainly liked the idea.

That's all about what to get.  Now I needed to figure out where to get it.  My left forearm made the most sense to me and it's always where I imagined myself getting a tattoo... but if I didn't overthink something then I just wouldn't be me.  Amiright?

Some criteria I had in mind.  First, I wanted it to reasonable.  I wasn't going to get this on my face crossing my nose.  I wanted to look like a person with a tattoo and not a tattoo with a person around it.

Second, I wanted it to be easily visible.  I wanted it's natural position to be seen.  Most of what I wear is jeans and button up short sleeved shirts, so that doesn't leave much skin visible.  My hands, my lower arms, my throat, my neck, and my face. 

Third, I wanted it to be easily hidden.  If I wanted to be professional, I wanted the ability to cover it up.  While I believe I'm in my last job, I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'll be here forever and will never have to interview again.

So reason-ability knocked out anywhere on the face. Face tattoos are fine for tattoo people, but they should come after they have full sleeves and a full back tat.  And it should come after they know that they'll never have to be taken seriously again.  Visibility knocked out the neck as most of my shirts are collared.  The collar comes right up to my hairline so unless it was tiny and just below my ear, you weren't going to see it on my neck.  Coverability knocked out my throat and my hands.  Interviewing with a tie covering my neck is fine, but gloves would just look odd.

So... yes, I was left with what I had originally started with.  My forearms.  At that point I just stayed with the left because that's where I always imagined a tattoo and having on my right arm didn't hold any special appeal.

Next up is where to get it done.  I don't live in a huge city, but there are several tattoo studios in town.  I have several friends with tattoos that I like, but they all got them done fairly far away.  And while I wouldn't mind traveling to get permanent work done on my body, I'd rather stay close to home so that if there's a problem afterward, it's easy to get back.

Now one thing I hold true of just about any business I share commerce with, is that I'd like them to have a creative online presence.  I mean, at LEAST a website.  In this instance, I'm wanting to get something artistic done to my body, so the more artistic their online presence is, the better.  I quickly narrowed it down to two places.  One was relatively new and had a good facebook presence while the other was more established and had a good web site.  The second studio was fine... their tats were really good but they really were showing off the realistic style and how colorful they could get.  I wanted neither realism nor color.  Just straight black.  And if it could be solid black and not lines, then all the better.  The studio was fine but didn't show any tattoos like that.

The first one, lets call them the facebook studio, was very creative.  Not only did they show a lot of their tattos, they linked to the artists websites.  They had three primary artists and an 'intern'.  Each artist as well as the intern had their own specific style and suggested you pick an artist based on their style.  While the three primary artists were loving on the color, the intern did some really spectacular black tattoos.  She even did some wonderful cartoon and clip art esque tats....

She was just the style I was looking for.

So I had what I wanted, where I wanted it, where I wanted to get it done, and even had who I wanted to do it!  When I went up to the studio to talk to them, I honestly had no idea of what to expect.  Would I be walking out hours later with ink done?  Would I have a sit down consult?  Would I be scheduling the consult and getting nothing done?

I talked to the receptionist and told her I was looking to get a tattoo.  My respect for the place immediately went up when she asked what kind of tattoo I wanted so that she could get the artist best suited for that style.  When I told her what I had in mind and even showed her the image on my phone she went to get the very artist I had already picked out!

I was a little nervous as the artist took one look at the image and said she'd design something based on it.  She didn't ask much, but I told her that I was looking for something flat, just one color, lots of black, but it should still show a three dimension nature to it as the snake was obviously snaking it's way round the rod.  She nodded and set up an appointment for 5 weeks later.

That's right, this place is good enough that they book out more than 30 days ahead!  Just like I want to see a resteraunt running good business to ensure the food is fresh, I like to see a business busy enough that they have to book out in advance.  It shows that their customers want quality and are willing to wait for what they want rather than go down the street and get it done now.

When I showed up for the appointment, she seemed very excited and showed me the design she worked on.  I realized as she was pulling it out that I had forgotten to mention the part of the dagger... but she either knew what I was looking for or we just work on the same wavelength as she had built it around a dagger!  When I smiled and told her it was perfect her response was "Kick Ass!"

Yeah, I should mention that she's young.  Easily in her early 20s.

Anyway, getting the tat itself was... fine.  I remembered from my test tat that it would sting, but that it would go away fairly quickly.  The artist took her time applying the stencil and then once she was happy (it made me happy that she had to do it three times.. not because of her failures, but because she didn't accept 'good enough'!), she outlined the whole thing.  Then she moved on to coloring it in.  Coloring it in took two different... heads?  I'm not sure what that part of the tattoo gun is, but the part with the needle(s).  One was a more precise head that she did right up against the outline where the other one filled in the center.

More or less, it was three passes to get the whole tat done.  On the first pass, I was fine.  On the second pass I was also fine.  During the last half of the final pass it really started to move past stinging and into pain.  I'm sure it didn't help that this was also moving closer to my elbow where the skin is more sensitive.

I guess it's common now to actually cover a new tattoo with a medical grade clear breathable bandage.  The first 'artist' I used in Grand Rapids did the same thing although his bandage failed miserably.  The artist here and now used some, but took the time to press it into place... even as she acknowledge that this would make it hurt.  And it did!  She wanted the bandage to stay on for 5 days even though all of their literature says between 3 and 5 days.  I'd imagine that's because there was a LOT of ink laid down on my arm.

Sadly, after three days, I just had to take the damned bandage off. My skin was growing red around the edges of it.  It wasn't the tat itself getting infected, it was my skin reacting to the bandage. So, I took it off one night after work and have been following the aftercare instructions since.  Cleaning it gently with liquid soap and my hands several times a day, keeping it moisturized with lotion several times a day, and of course not itching it or rubbing on it.

Even so... it's peeling.  It's peeling a lot.  I recall my other tattoo peeling too.  And while I never noticed it peeling as much as this current one is, it was also under my shirt where that action would rub it clean before I got home and could look at it.  This one... well it just flakes an flakes.  Thankfully it doesn't seem to be losing any of it's intensity.  Sadly.. it doesn't photograph well.  You'll have to trust me when I say that her lines were prefectly clear and awesome looking, because the flakes make it look pretty bad.  As for the evenness of the color fill.... only time will tell.  I think it's uneveness is from the flaking, but I won't be able to test that until the peeling is done.

Anywho, without further adu... here's my tat!

I'll try my best to remember to post an image in a couple weeks when it's fully healed.