Tattoos - Bern Johnson - "Radiation Tattoos"

When the Tattoos challenge was posted I thought, Yay ... a challenge “right up my alley” as I have two tattoos. I came to love tattoos and body art once I started seeing them in bright colours rather than awful khaki colours. I myself have two tattoos: a lion and a forget-me-not.

But one night when giving my dear husband a back rub, I noticed his tattoos.
Barry’s tattoos weren’t done for pleasure, you see they were done as radiation markers when he was treated for prostate cancer.

Barry’s tattoos were tattooed on his hips and just above the crack in his buttocks so the radiation machine could be lined up accurately to deliver the radiation to his body that would, thankfully, deliver the treatment that would save his life. 

So instead of focusing my challenge quilt on my tattoos and my original theme of my tattoos and the list of tattoos that tattoos that I want to get done (yes, I have a list), I decided to do my challenge quilt on the theme of my husband’s radiation tattoos to highlight medical tattoos.

So there began the task of getting my husband to turn “this way and that” so that I could draw his body and place the tattoos accurately where they are situated on his body. Barry is 69 and a bit rotund (aren't a lot of us?). I have sewn his grey/white hair on the back of his head with the sewing machine. The hair is not perfect but it a suggestion of what his hair is like. I have drawn and coloured in his underwear on the side view of his body, to save a bit of time with applique and protect my husband's "dignity". 

The quilting is of ocean waves as hubby is a keen fisherman and so his aim once he was through his prostatectomy (removal of the prostate back in 2015) was to get back out fishing. He was then diagnosed as needing radiation back at the end of 2017 and started radiation in December 2017 and finished that treatment in January 2018. Likewise the backing fabric is of fish, against harking back to my husband's love of fishing. 

For the first time ever I have used the facing style of backing the quilt. 

At first I hated the idea of Barry having to have radiation. The idea of such treatment was abominable.
I went into the treatment room to see the area where he would be having the treatment. I could not obviously be in the room with him during the treatment period.

But the treatment was a success. Some time on and the cancer is undetectable. I thank God every day for that and for having my husband “alive and kicking”.

In making this quilt I wanted to highlight radiation tattoos and to highlight that not all tattoos are done for pleasure.