I am so ouchy but we got at least a third of my tattoo fully shaded and colored. We got my frog filled in as part of that and he's so cute! I need to name him, taking suggestions.
I stopped posting progress because I kept having healing problems and losing bits of ink and I felt embarrassed, but now my tattoo is nearly complete, just need to heal this session's ink and get a final touchup!
This tattoo has totally changed my relationship with my chest. I still get dysphoric and bind sometimes, but at least 50% less. My brain is very easily distracted by the beautiful images and following them across my body, which is great.
My artist, Alayna Magnan at Rabble Rouser tattoo was extremely awesome and supportive, and let me use her recommended numbing gel and bactine with lidocaine to help keep me going through the 3 5 hour color sessions!
I couldn't find any tattoos with this kind of placement or breaking up my chest when I was researching, so I want to share here.
This whole thing has also been a fun way to figure out that I have minor but likely permanent nerve damage from my top surgery. Nothing huge, but several spots of reduced pain sensation, in some cases, very significantly reduced! I already knew I had some because of the random nipple pain, but I have pretty normal feeling in the other spots, other than pain. Definitely validates my decision to do this rather than try to get a revision tho.
This has healed perfectly! I have decided the frog is Muriel, but still need a grandma-ish name for the blue spotted salamander! Ideally slightly judgy, but generally good-hearted. Thinking about maybe Edna, or Myrna, but they're not quite clicking. I do not want to use any variant of Mary or Sarah, Frances, Irene, or Violet.
Touchup is done and healed, so now Muriel, Edna, and Agnes are complete! This tattoo continues to be an incredible boost to my overall quality of life, which I really need because a bunch of other things really suck rn. My brain is easily distracted, I guess, but when I look in the mirror, most times I think "hey, there's Muriel, Edna, and Agnes, my buds" and not "wow, my chest makes me feel so dysphoric." I definitely recommend my artist, Alayna Magnan to anyone looking for this style, she was really wonderful to work with!
