Tattoos: Easy To Get, Painfully Hard To Remove

by Dennis Townsend, Contributing Writer

Well now let’s say that it’s been 30 glorious days of bliss, and he or she is all your dreams wrapped up in one beautiful package and you couldn’t be more happier. You decide to let the whole world know that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with so you do what millions of others have done in the glee of the moment…. you get a tattoo. And you just didn’t settle for a small discreet tattoo, you had to have one to let the public know that you are here-by dedicating your life to this person.

Now in a perfect world, the love will last forever until "death do you part" and in that case all is well, but what if by some chance it didn’t turn out like that fairy-tale you had envisioned? Getting over the heartbreak and misery is bad enough, but now you have to look at that permanent reminder etched on your skin when you shower, or go to the beach, and if you happen to pursue another relationship, the other party might not take to kindly to you advertising another "brand" so to speak. Getting the tattoo had it’s own risk such as getting hepatitis C from dirty needles being used by numerous unregulated tattoo parlors, and now you have changed your mind and tattoo removal, is a whole new nightmare.

Dr. Suzanne Kilmer, a clinical professor at the University of California-Davis, and the founder of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center, has seen more than her share of "tattoo regrets." She has removed more than 20,000 tattoos, and that’s no small accomplishment. Dr. Kilmer is no run of the mill dermatologist, she is a world-renowned, pre-eminent expert in the field of laser tattoo removal and laser skin care. And just knowing that about her qualifications should also tell you that tattoo removal is not going to be cheap. Dr. Kilmer’s work has opened up possibilities for better and faster ways to remove tattoos in a world filled with people obsessed with etching body art on their outermost organ.

Tattoo removal is difficult, lengthy, and painful. You can compare it to hot bacon grease spattered on your skin. Or someone smacking you with a stretched rubber band up close. One patient described it as hot oil running under the skin. Lasers deliver hot, powerful pulses through the upper skin to a deeper layer where a tattoo artist has embedded the pigment. And if you think that’s pain, how about the $150 to $1,000 each for the multiple appointments it’s going to take for you to finally get rid of your mistake. So the moral of the story is, find another way to confess your love besides getting a tattoo because if it falls short of forever, the pain of trying to forget the relationship could be two-fold.


Photo courtesy of wikimediacommons.com

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