In this thread, we commiserate about healing our fresh tattoos.

[Synesthesia]

I agree lower leg tattoos bring swolleness and pain, but sitting at home with them would be overkill, IMO. Save those sick days for when you want to go surfing on the sly, or drinking beer.

I should clarify my job gives a ton of PTO and I do not surf/drink beer, so I pretty much only use all those hours for tattoos. ;)

if it gets the slightest bit dry, I have to walk to my toes, so it doesn't stretch out the skin

Ha, I thought I was the only one who did that. When I do finally get moving, that's the only way I can walk, putting my foot all the way down creates a whole new world of pain.

[HaydenRose]

For me personally, I was mostly pain free by about day 5. For the first 2 or 3 days, every time you go to stand up, it feels like your leg has the worst bruise imaginable and someone is squeezing it as tight as they possibly can. My artist warned me this would happen when we did my first lower leg one, but I didn't really know what he meant. So I kind of hopped out of bed the next morning and was instantly crippled by the pain and had to sit down again. For those first couple days, it takes me a good few minutes to stand up and get moving and then I'm limping everywhere. It seems to be the longer your leg stays elevated, the worse it gets when you do stand up...but if you don't elevate your leg, it swells up like a balloon. Kind of a lose-lose outcome.

I usually only give myself about a day to recover and head back to work when I'm still in the hobbling stages. Luckily my job is mostly sitting, so I can tough it out. I wouldn't dream of going back to work so soon on a job that's primarily standing...

Thanks for that! I'm getting a lower leg tattoo in May *cringe* and plan on taking the next day off from work. Laying around the house watching TV is the ideal PTO for me haha

[polliwog]

I'm on my feet 8 hours a day, so it looks I need to plan ahead a bit for a leg tattoo. Moving slowly isn't really an option, especially since I already do a lot of carrying for various other injured folks at work. Thanks for the input, though. Looks like I might make a vacation of it this summer.

[Hospitelli]

For what it's worth my entire lower leg is done and I didn't think it was too bad from what I can remember. Walking on it shouldn't be a problem without too much discomfort. Yea there is some but it's nothing too excruciating where you can't walk on it entirely. The only thing I would ever suggest taking time off 100% for is if you get your feet tattooed.

[KegRN]

So which page of this thread gives advice on itching? I swear, I'd rather this thing hurt than itched. It's driving me crazy.

[Mark Bee]

The lower leg was the worst thing I've ever healed. By a long, long, way. Be prepared for the possibility of a week of pure evil.

[Graeme]

I'm on my feet 8 hours a day, so it looks I need to plan ahead a bit for a leg tattoo. Moving slowly isn't really an option, especially since I already do a lot of carrying for various other injured folks at work. Thanks for the input, though. Looks like I might make a vacation of it this summer.

I work on my feet too (and have to wear high waterproof boots as well, which is an added complication) and I try to schedule the tattoos on my legs so that I have at least a day off between getting tattooed and going to work, so basically I'll get tattooed on a Friday or Saturday if I'm working again on Monday. Because I'm often travelling for tattoos the day of rest is kind of built into it...I'll get tattooed and stay overnight, drive back the next day, then go back to work the day after that.

I did get a leg tattoo once and worked the next day, but it was a little fist-sized thing, and it was fine.

[OutOfIdeas]

My last tattoo was basically all of my calf, a raven by Miles at FST (picture in one of the recent monthly contest threads) and I have to say, healing it was pretty bad. I was healing ny arm ditch when i got the calf, and thought ditch was bad, nope!

As long as i stayed on my feet it was mostly ok, the occasional burning cramp (and walking on toes, like someone mentioned) but everytime I elevated it at all, the process of putting weight back on to it was terrible. It would burn, and cramp and I'd have to limp quite severely for a minute or two until it loosened back up. The walk to the tube station, and walking from the train to the car after sitting through an hour's journey were both completely shit as well.

[SeeSea]

So which page of this thread gives advice on itching? I swear, I'd rather this thing hurt than itched. It's driving me crazy.

I'll trade with you. The itching doesn't really bother me too much. I'd take a boatload more itching in order to reduce some of the agony of GETTING the tattoo.

[jenfur427]

The lower leg was the worst thing I've ever healed. By a long, long, way. Be prepared for the possibility of a week of pure evil.

Reading all of the lower leg suckiness of healing makes me feel better. I was totally like "What the hell? I've never had issues for this long, and I have much larger tattoos than this one". I'm 7 days out, and today is the first day that I haven't wanted to curse randomly due to pain. It looked so gnarly too, all red and puffy. At least today it doesn't look so bad.

[Mark Bee]

Reading all of the lower leg suckiness of healing makes me feel better. I was totally like "What the hell? I've never had issues for this long, and I have much larger tattoos than this one". I'm 7 days out, and today is the first day that I haven't wanted to curse randomly due to pain. It looked so gnarly too, all red and puffy. At least today it doesn't look so bad.

Heh, yeah, its awful. But, you have a great tattoo, and that lasts forever!

[Tesseracts]

My tattoo is nearly 3 weeks old and it still had bumps, red spots, and itchiness. On the plus side the color just keeps getting better and nothing has healed wrong as far as I can tell.

[HaydenRose]

I am so fucked. The only week I can take off from work to adopt and spend time with a new puppy is the week right after my lower leg tattoo appt. This is going to be intense HAHA

[Pugilist]

By intense you mean AWESOME right?

[HaydenRose]

Maybe intense as in bittersweet? Bad timing much? Lol

[OutOfIdeas]

Just let him lick it better! I mean, him cleaning it has to help, right? Otherwise dog's wouldn't naturally lick their own wounds. Logic.

[HaydenRose]

Maybe I should test the healing powers of dog saliva?? Haha I'll report back, maybe start a new trend!

[Synesthesia]

My dog always wants to lick my fresh tattoos, I spend most of my healing time just shooing him away.

[OutOfIdeas]

Maybe I should test the healing powers of dog saliva?? Haha I'll report back, maybe start a new trend!

Im sure you're joking, but on the very small chance you take it seriously, this is a disclaimer that I take no responsibility whatsoever if they amputate your leg due to gangrene or similar.

[HaydenRose]

Im sure you're joking, but on the very small chance you take it seriously, this is a disclaimer that I take no responsibility whatsoever if they amputate your leg due to gangrene or similar.

Oh, I'm definitely kidding haha I'm paranoid enough as it is about messing up my tattoos, I don't need to add insult to injury.

[polliwog]

So far my experience of healing a lower leg tattoo (most of the back of my calf) is that it feels fine 95 percent of the time and so painful that I need to stop what I'm doing to grimace/swear the other 5 percent. It's not as bad as I was fearing from this thread, though!

Really glad I'm taking the train home and not flying.

[RoryQ]

This is for @BrianH ...

Pretty heavy scabbing in parts around the 8-9 day mark. Then, a shot from today (I think it's been 3-4 weeks since I was tattooed, can't quite remember).

It's still a little shiny and new, also gets dry, but I don't think I lost anything... Not the best photo but you get the idea I hope.

[beez]

Love that tattoo, @RoryQ!

[Tesseracts]

At 3 weeks my tattoo is mostly healed. But there is a single bump in the center that is persistently itchy. Nothing else is very itchy. Is this a keloid or something or is it normal?

[tatB]

@RoryQ thanks for sharing those photos. We should start a charitable foundation to help support tattoo collectors through scabby healing situations.