If you're ever trying to talk someone out of getting a tattoo, this is the kinda story that could definitely serve as serious ammunition! A 29-year-old sales manager named Elspeth is set to appear on the U.K. TLC show Extreme Beauty Disasters after going to great pains to remove a calf tattoo she got when she was 19. She says she was motivated to get rid of it, explaining to The Daily Mail, "I'm trying to make it in my career and I constantly see people looking at it when I wear skirts and high heels. ... I felt it was tacky." As a result, she decided to go through with laser surgery, but that's when things went from bad to much worse ...
"After a few sessions, it [the tattoo] got really, really bad," Elspeth explained. The procedure left her with burns, scars, and -- wait for it -- the very same ink she came in the door with. That's right. In the end, it didn't even WORK! So crazy!
But because the woman at the clinic reassured Elspeth that pain and scabbing were normal, she kept going to her appointments. That is until "it got infected, to the point that skin was dropping off." Uck! She admits, "I really should have gone to the [doctor] but I just trusted this woman. It became a horrible combination of scar, burn, tattoo, everything in one."
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This poor woman! Not only does this sound like a complete horror story, but it's a shame that tattoo removal is so involved, time-consuming, and difficult to go through -- even when it is done the right way! Though I guess it really serves to reiterate just how permanent ink is.
Thankfully, healthy tattoo removal is possible -- if you go through the right channels, of course. More recently, Elspeth is going to a health care professional to give laser tattoo removal another, safer shot. But the scarring left by the botched job was so bad that she has been using cosmetic camouflage, a type of concealer originally created for burns victims. She says "it's too difficult to put on every day," so she's hoping that, "at some point in the future, I'll be able to go out again and just show off my legs." Here's hoping for her.
Have you ever had a tattoo removed? Ever heard a tattoo removal horror story like this one?
Image via © A3778 Fredrik von Erichsen/dpa/Corbis