Dumbledore is back with more wisdom. And visions of ink.
It’s not Little Warrior that wants a tattoo. It's me, the mama.
I have somehow managed to make it 41 years without a single tat. I’ll be (finally) graduating from seminary in December. I want a tattoo!
(What, you think ministers are immune to the subtle temptation of ink?)
A bunch of my friends all went and got tattoos about three years ago. I wanted to wait til I graduated. A couple of months later, Little Warrior was diagnosed with a relapse. She wound up needing several infusions, but none of my friends could donate blood, because of the tattoos.
Now, it’s not the worry of needing to donate blood that holds me back. A) There was plenty of blood in the blood bank and B) They don’t let parents directly donate blood anyway.
Why? Well, that brings me to what’s holding me back on when I’m going to get a tattoo.
They don’t want parents of cancer kids doing direct donations because god-forbid, they may need to donate bone marrow or a kidney to their kid somewhere down the line. Apparently there’s a small but real risk that if they get your blood, their body might make antibodies, which would then attack the bone marrow or organ.
So, a seemingly simple decision – Do Ya Wanna Get a Tattoo? – is complicated by … You Want a Tattoo? But What If Something Awful Happens and You Need to Donate Sumpin’ to Yo’ Baby Within the Next Year?
Summarized as:
“Are you feeling lucky, punk?”
It’s not big. It’s not dramatic. We’re 2 years + past ending treatment. Life gets back to normal and silly things like tattoos become something you think about again.
It’s just an example of how cancer becomes this very mundane everyday thing affecting all aspects of our lives.
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