Tattoo remorse

/Home/Cosmetic Laser Treatments/Laser Tattoo Removal/Tattoo Removal Treatment

Tattoo remorse
23 july 07
Larry Muhammad
Courier-Journal

On impulse at a late-night party the woman had the name of a man tattooed on her left breast. The problem: It wasn't her husband's, and the next morning she was desperate to have it removed.

"This tattoo was freshly done," said Wayne Denner, owner of Spider Tattoo Studio in Radcliff, recalling the event. "And when she came in, her husband was standing right beside her, saying 'If you don't take it off, we're getting a divorce.' So I covered it up, put some daisies and vines over top of it and that solved the problem."

Tattoo remorse, though, is a growing phenomenon. A recent federal Food and Drug Administration study found that of 45 million Americans with tattoos, almost 8 million of them regretted it. Both a plastic surgeon in Louisville and Fort Thomas said that requests for tattoo removal are rising nearly 20 percent a year.

It's an equal-opportunity emotion, afflicting celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, who removed the "Billy Bob" tattoo from her left arm after filing for divorce in 2003, and Jessica Ruple, a Louisville auction operator who's now having three tattoos erased -- a frog on her calf, a name on her ankle, and a snake in flames on her shoulder.

"I was a little wild in my youth, went through a rebellious stage," said Ruple, 27. "Now I'm getting older, I have two kids, and I want them to know that they don't have to put things on their body."

Her doctor, Louisville plastic and reconstructive surgeon Joseph Banis, called tattoo removal "a subject near and dear to my heart. You put them on in haste and repent at leisure with big expense.

"Once you put it on, there's not much option if you ultimately decide you can't live with it. It's a little bit like thinking twice before you get married. If you've got to get a divorce, the only question is how much it's going to cost."

A tattoo costing hundreds of dollars to put on can cost thousands to remove by laser.

The procedure is painful, usually spread over several months, isn't covered by insurance, and doesn't always completely remove the tattoo.

Matt Williamson, an artist at Electric Art Tattoo in Lexington, had a face tattooed on his leg years ago, but grew dissatisfied with its eyes. So he had a plastic surgeon remove the eyes by laser, then went to another tattoo parlor and had them put back in.

"I just liked the original design," he said. "I still have the tattoo."

He had paid $130 for the original tattoo, but having the eyes partially removed cost $500.

"I just had the laser treatment once, and they weren't all the way taken out," Williamson said. "But since I was having them replaced, it worked pretty well."

Tattoos have adorned the human body for thousands of years. They've been exhibited at carnivals, worn by military servicemen and street gang members.

In recent years, they've become a fashion accessory, popularized by celebrities and sports figures.

But the more people who have them, the greater the number who want them removed.

The American Society of Dermatological Surgery said in 2005 that 6 percent of all patients getting laser treatments were having tattoos removed.

A Merrillville, Ind., program called Operation Tattoo Zap used laser to remove hundreds of unwanted gang symbols, names and initials from former gang members.

A new tattoo ink called Freedom-2, scientifically formulated for easier laser removal and expected to go on sale this fall, has been approved by the FDA, although the FDA doesn't' regulate the tattoo industry.

There are even fading creams, like Tat B Gone, which is formulated in an FDA-approved lab and purports to painlessly remove tattoos in the privacy of your home.

Cosmetic surgery agencies that specialize in tattoo removal, like Dr. Tattoff, Tat2BeGone and Tattoo MD, have opened in California, and several Louisville dermatologists and plastic surgeons are erasing unwanted body art with lasers.

Because skin cells get heated in the process of dissolving the tattoo, only small areas can be treated at a time, in 20- to 30-minute sessions that have to be spaced weeks apart so the skin can repair.

"The problem is getting the tattoo off without scarring," said Dr. Lafayette Owen, emeritus chief of dermatology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He said infection is not an issue.

"Twenty-five years ago, people would use salt, rubbing it over the skin like sandpaper, with the hope that the tattoo would exude itself," Owen said. "The old thing is to replace the tattoo with a scar. Some of the new laser treatments are better. They leave some scar, but it's imperceptible.

"Another factor is how deep the tattoo is," he said. "You can take off the epidermis, but if the ink is deep in the skin, almost to the underlying fat, you'll get more scarring. A good professional tattooist would not go quite so deep."

Chemical peel, and surgical excision, where tattooed skin is removed by scalpel and the wound sutured, are also used to remove body art, but Denner, of Spider Tattoo, said he's erased smaller, already fading tattoos by a method he called "cat scratch."

"We use the tattoo needle, go over it without ink, and if you don't put ointment on, it scabs up and the scab pulls the ink out," he said. "We're in the market of putting tattoos on, not in the market of taking them off, and the main things I've done are names, an inch or two long, that are already light."

The cost: about $25.

Ruple has paid around $3,500 so far in eight laser treatments over a two-year period to get her three tattoos removed.

The fancy cursive name on her ankle is about 2 inches long, but the other two are larger and elaborately rendered -- the black and turquoise frog on her calf and the snake in flames on her shoulder are both about 5 inches square.

"My grandmother from California came down last year for Thunder, I wore a backless shirt, and she saw the snake tattoo," Ruple said. "She was like, 'Dear, you know you can get those removed. You don't want the kids getting them.' And that sort of changed my mind."

She said two of the tattoos are almost completely gone.

"I would say they're 80 percent done," she said, "and it's been worth it. I spend a car payment every month on this, but it's worth it getting them removed."