How far would you travel for a nipple?

Here's a man who's found his niche market!

This touching 5 minute video shows the story of a feisty woman who had a double mastectomy and her visit to Vinnie Myers in Maryland.

Vinnie is not a doctor or surgeon but a tattoo artist who seems like a pretty cool guy and he specialises in creating 3D nipple tattoos for women who have had a mastectomy.  I have heard that in hospital, after a reconstruction by implant, women are offered stickers to replace their nipples and eventually tattoos if they wish.  The problem is that it's not necessarily a speciality for plastic surgeons and they have difficulty in matching the colour of a remaining nipple in the case of a unilateral mastectomy or the creating something with a natural look as they have around just 12 pigments to choose from.  Vinne hand mixes the pigments and tries to match it as well as possible to the skin colour and original nipple colour.

As the patient says, "there's a lot of bad nipples out there".

Apparently, people have flown in from as far as Dubai to 'get a Vinnie' and his tattoo parlour does 1500 - 2000 nipples per year and is at full capacity.  He was about to give up the nipple business when he received a call telling him that his sister had breast cancer, so he felt this was a sign to continue his work, even though he finds it less artistically challenging that the classic tattoos.  He now works with several US hospitals.

As the woman in the story says, nipples are a taboo subject but she just wanted to "look normal again".  Trying to see the light in small things, her little dance of happiness at the end is poignant and the moment is bittersweet, but she was happy with her new nipples and good for her searching out the best, despite the long journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egq2qnnXSPY

Vinnie has plenty of links if you Google him.  Here's an impressive set of his work and before and after photos.

http://community.breastcancer.org/blog/qa-with-vinnie-myers-3d-nipple-tattoo-specialist/

It frightens me to know how close I came to not having a nipple on the left breast where the tumour was.  The surgeon had to take off so much tissue and skin that he was forced to take away the part of my breast where the nipple was, so he grafted the nipple back on during the operation.  It's not the same as the right hand side.  There is absolutely no feeling in it and it's paler than the right and not perfectly shaped, but it's mine and it looks real!  I was not prepared for this, it was a terrible shock to know that he'd done this.  I wish he had prepared me if he could have anticipated this.  It was one of the first things he told me once I'd come round.  At that point I felt completely numb and shocked, but looking back on it, I feel very shivery and sad and pretty angry that I had to go through that.  I envy you your nipples!