Stitches and Ink

The first one came during the Whitehall game Junior year when my face mask broke earning 20 stitches on the chin. Scott King said I looked like a turkey when I unbuckled the chin strap. I got another 40 stitches on the left foot a week later cutting off ankle tape. That followed with 15 on my finger from hanging my hand out of Dave Flack’s truck. For me scars are part of life, so whenever you have medical treatment chances are you’ll end up with a scar of some kind. Robotic surgery took off because doctors called it bikini surgery. What would be worse then seeing me with a scar when I’m in a bikini?

If you have radiation treatment, however, you’ll end up with a couple tattoo dots to target the radiation. I’ve had radiation treatment over three decades, trust me, there’s been a big improvement since broad beam therapy.   Long ago doctors tried to shield your good organs with lead blocks by marking your skin with tattoo dots designed like lungs, kidneys, etc. I have so many tattoo dots my kids use to draw the constellations on me with a marker. I know how Winnie the Pooh felt when he got stuck in the honey tree.

Tattoos are the inverse of scars. Tattoos are images from within defining who you are.  Mine are Celtic, Faith based designs personal to me, so I don’t flash them everywhere. Looking at me in public you wouldn’t even know I have a tattoo, but swimming on the beach you’d think I just busted out of Alcatraz. When I take my shirt off babies fill their diapers and old men knock their wives down to get out of the way.  Luckily, you can remove tattoos, but there’s always a faint shadow that reveals Mickey Mouse, a flaming skull, or the eyeball on your forehead you got in Newport Beach one drunken night in the Navy.

As for scars they are stories of the outside world coming into you. When I see a scar on someone I know what happened (knee implant, brain bleed, nose job, etc). You can tell a person’s health story just from scars.  Me, however, you wouldn’t know where to start; it’s like the buffet at Ponderosa. I have one that runs stem to stern that couples a spleen removal with open heart surgery. I have a ring around my neck from years of skin cancers. Another long one on my left arm from vein harvesting, bunches of slashes from excess Vitamin D and radiation, etc. I got so many gashes my sons call me “Inside Out Boy.” One day Diane measured all the ones she could find and came up with over 120 inches or nearly 10 feet. That’s bigger than one of Dusty Crum’s pythons on “Guardians of the Glades.”

Some women agonize over little nicks on their bodies, but then get full arm tattoos to compliment their sleeveless wedding gowns. How does that square? Regardless, I look at scars as a cheap man’s plastic surgery. For all I care they’re badges honoring all the clinical people who have kept me going.  Given my light skin, I expect many more stitches, but what I’m really looking forward to is the next tattoo in 2026 celebrating 5 extra years of surviving. To honor the occasion maybe a tramp stamp on the lower back with a unicorn? A rainbow? A smiling mushroom?  Any of those will definitely cause a riot on the beach. Slainte.