2nd day of aftercare
(Or maybe the first full one? I’m not sure.) Anyway, this is what I was worried about last time I posted:
I saw this under the clingfilm and thought OMG! I washed it the first time with a washcloth and now I’ve ruined it. All the ink’s coming out and it’s a disaster!
However, when I took the clingfilm off and washed it after the first 8 hours under wraps, it looked like this:
So evidently the horrible black blotch was just excess ink coming out. I then washed it and re-covered it again before going to bed, and in the morning it had only seeped a little. The seepage was clear and the inflammation had gone down, although not completely.
Benefits of clingfilm dressing include not having to worry if you will stick to your sheets at night or clothes during the day. Drawbacks include the fact that it’s fussy and difficult to do when you don’t have a helper. Also that the zinc oxide tape I used to tape it down has started to bring me out in an itchy rash. The rash is nowhere near the tattoo, so I’m putting up with it for the moment until I can get some microporous tape instead, first thing tomorrow.
I checked the instructions I was given when I left the shop and it turns out I’m supposed to keep the clingfilm on for 4 days, so non-itchy tape sounds like a necessity.
Unexpected side effects of tattooing include my family behaving weirdly around me as if I had somehow become a different person overnight. This goes firmly in the “I’m never having another one,” column. Here’s hoping they get over it and don’t disown me. I’ll add that to the list of worries alongside “what if it becomes infected and I have to have my arm amputated?” (What? I know it’s a remote possibility, but I can’t completely rule it out.)
Not an enormously eventful day. It’s seeping less and it’s looking less inflamed now than it did in that picture. Also one of the rays is looking slightly wiggly. But otherwise nothing else has happened. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me, and I’m cautiously optimistic that I may still get through this with the use of my arm. (God willing.)
