Experience with getting ill right after being tattooed?

[Kittycakes]

So, I got pretty ill — along with the rest of my family — the day after my last tattoo. Fever, snot, puking, the whole lovely picture. 🙂 My artist advised me to stay hydrated, eat healthily, take vitamins, and see what happened, oh, and not to take NSAIDs. Despite this sound advice, the healing process went really weirdly, and now after two weeks, I feel hard scar tissue bits in multiple parts of it. I'm wondering if other folks here have had a similar experience with getting ill right after a tattoo (not "tattoo flu", but just plain old ill), and how their tattoo ended up healing over the long term? 

[oboogie]

I have sinus infections about once a quarter. I've been sick when getting tattooed, after getting tattooed, before getting tattooed. It doesn't make any difference to how my tattoos heal.

[Kittycakes]

Thanks for your reply. Red ink features heavily in this tattoo, and I've had (albeit minor) issues with that before, so that may also be part of the weird healing. This tattoo is taking a LOT longer to heal, and the process has looked different, though. It's still too early to tell what it will end up looking like, but I really hope it will be OK. 

[oboogie]

You can always get it touched up. Locations of the tattoos mean they heal at different rates. My legs take longer to heal than my arms.

[Gingerninja]

Hey....give a few months to settle in. Your body was sick then you stuck it with <x> number of needles causing a fresh wound. Be patient and let your body heal.

[rdinak]

When I was working on my dragon, I went in for a five hour session. Unknown to me, I was coming down with the flu. During the session I had chills and started shaking. Thought maybe my shirt had been off too long.

Yes I had the real deal FLU. Doctor told me to take some time off work. I felt like crap.

The work turned out perfectly. No one in the shop got sick.

 just felt very poor for a week. Nothing to do with the ink. I have another large piece in the drawing stages. If I even thought I was getting sick, I would reschedule out of respect to my artist.

 

Hope this helps,

RD

 

 

[Kittycakes]

Glad to hear your work turned out fine, RD. 

Getting ill a few days BEFORE the session would definitely have been better — I'd have rescheduled and not exposed anyone else to my incubating whatever it was. (I don't think it was the flu, but it was quite nasty.) To my knowledge, nobody else at the shop got ill, fortunately, and my artist was still able to travel to his guest spot in another country a few days later. 

I know there's nothing to do but wait to see how it turns out, but it was a weird experience for sure. A touch up will probably be in order. It's the hard scar-feeling spots, which I've never had before, that I'm worried about a bit. I hope they'll go away in time.