A diagnosis of breast cancer is devastating. Being told you have to have your breasts removed can be catastrophic.
Techniques in reconstruction have made tremendous strides and creating natural looking breasts is now possible. Silicone implants can take the shape and feel of your natural breasts.
But the scar across the new breast can serve as a stark reminder that you are a survivor. While it is a good to be a survivor, your ability to return to a normal, healthy life can be hampered by the sight of these scars every morning. If only we could hide your scars from your eyes…
Plastic surgeons and their aesthetic colleagues can recreate nipples that look awesome, so awesome that when you look in the mirror, you see a beautiful woman with natural, healthy appearing breasts. You no longer see the woman who won her battle against breast cancer, but you see a sexy, vibrant woman ready to look and feel her best out in society. And this includes wearing revealing, or not-so-revealing, bathing suits.
While the recreated breast may have a scar, a recreated nipple can hide or camouflage those scars. This recreated nipple will never have the sensation and internal feeling of a natural nipple, but you can look your best!
Recreating nipples is more of an art form that a standard surgical technique. Plastic Surgeons are true artists. And like any great works of art, there is a basic structure and a basic technique to start the process, but it is the final touches and the attention to detail that can make a recreated nipple and a recreated breast a true work of art. Most Plastic Surgeons display their art works on their own websites, so that you can judge the efforts of these surgical artists.
After a plastic surgeon recreates a nipple, the final touches are often tattooing of the nipple so that the nipple looks natural. Quite often the aesthetic team in the plastic surgeon’s clinic will tattoo the skin. But now professional tattooists are starting to participate in the creation of natural-looking nipples.
One such tattooist has been profiled by the New York TImes in a story titled: The Nipple Artist. The Nipple Artist is a tattoo artist from Maryland named Vinnie, who uses his talent for the art of nipple recreation. He tattoos the recreated nipple so that the new nipple appears as natural as can possibly be to the point that it looks as if the women never had surgery.
Vinnie receives such reward and meaning from helping women with breast cancer, that he was willing to forgo the wildly creative aspects of his art and follow a more meaningful direction of his art to help women with breast cancer feel good about themselves again. And while great landscapes, imaginative creatures and faces with beautiful detail will not adorn the nipple of women who have survived breast cancer, the joy and satisfaction of women with nipples that not only hide surgical scars but are almost indistinct from their original nipples, is a reward that great art cannot recreate.
Nipple recon really is great art. This gentleman is truly a Nipple Artist, as are the many great Plastic Surgeons that help so many breast cancer survivors look and feel good about themselves.