Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Uh, On Second Thought...OW!

I think long hair started the whole upheaval. Following some time later was the earring fad; now, everybody has a tattoo, not just sailors and indigenous folks featured in National Geographic. It is estimated that a large percentage of young people are getting tatted these days. I have four children, and three of them are inked to some degree or other...meaning our family is ahead (or behind, depending on perspective) of the tattoo curve.
The fact that interested me the most is that it is estimated that half of all the folks getting artwork done will, at some point in their lives, want to have the tattoo removed. Of course, that speaks to the thought that went into the depiction and location to begin with. For example, one of our children has ink that covers most of his back, put there by a Buddhist monk who used special letters and symbols to ensure such things as protection for the wearer's family (and invisibility, I think). I can live with that, especially when it is not readily apparent even when he's wearing a tank top. Anyway, I doubt seriously whether that tattoo will ever qualify for removal for several reasons.
We all understand that removing a tat via laser is something of a painful proposition, but I didn't realize that the satisfactory removal generally takes between 10 and 15 visits! OW! (and that's just from the pain of shelling out a couple of hundred dollars for each visit). Compound that with the fact that blue and yellow inks as well as older tattoos (especially for smokers) can be darned hard to get rid of at all!
In an Italian study conducted by Dr. Luigi Naldi, 352 painted people were subject to laser-removal procedures using the standard Q-switched laser that fired off bursts in nano-second intervals to break up the ink. Half were satisfied after 10 treatments, and three-fourths were satisfied, but it took 15 treatments to accomplish the job.
Meanwhile, and American scientist, Dr. Nazanin Saedi of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia has performed experiments on volunteers that utilized laser bursts measured in pico seconds (?). She got positive results in a mere two or four sessions. No word on the cost, and the procedure has not yet been deemed safe by the governmental organization that monitors such things.
Still, for my money, I will avoid the tattoo craze.
Getting a tetanus shot will fill my quota of needle-in-my-body pain for the time being.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home