this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)
Comradeship // Freechat
2168 readers
115 users here now
Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.
A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tattoo ink can absolutely trigger your body's immune response and cause severe reactions. This can happen out of the blue as well, as your immune system could detect the "foreign invader" at any time, and trigger a multitude of responses to try and destroy the threat.
Its very common for people to get a regular sickness, and because their immune system was in an elevated state, it all of a sudden detects the tattoo and attempts to destroy it by causing severe inflammation and other immune responses.
Yep, all the black ink on my nearly-complete traditional sleeve (so.... lots) had a spontaneous granulomatous reaction this year. They were all at least a few years old.
It's currently healing thanks to a topical steroid, but I have yet to see if it stays away for any significant length of time. I can't even have them removed (not that I want to), lest the ink enters my bloodstream and lodges in some gland somewhere. Black ink reactions are super rare; my derm had never seen one in person.
My artist even uses one of the few approved-in-the-EU inks, go figure.