Hello everyone! First of all, I hope I posted in the right topic, everything else was blocked and I am kinda desperate to seek the advices cause' I've seen some interesting topics around here and this forum might bring some light in my case as well, maybe will ease my worries too, who knows.
Before I will elaborate my problem, I wanna tell you guys I already have 4 masterpieces all healed up properly by the same artist, so we made the fifth on the chest, later that day I noticed a red line crossing the clavicle just above the tattoo itself.
Is very important to mention that he has told me to keep the area covered with foil for about an hour, due to other things I managed to take it down after 4-5 hours, bare in mind that the adhesive tape was attached to the skin all this time.
So after a few days the redness has spread (not very prominent yet) and was now surrounding the tattoo just a little outside of where the skin was inked.
I made an initial contact with my artist and he told me that the redness appeared because I kept the adhesive tape for too long which might cause an allergy and it should be back to normal in a couple of days. That made sense to me at the time.
The thing is, it hasn't gone back to normal, so after 2 weeks I visited a dermatologist and got diagnosed with contact dermatitis, I got some antibiotics and some ointment based on a steroid, for a while it did make the redness from the clavicle go away, but then redness went a little bit further to shoulder, first days the treatment seemed to be helping but then was suddenly not having any effects. I was supposed to go back to check with them after the treatment, but because I didn't like the way I was treated as a patient to begin with in the first place also the way they spoke to me was rude, having tattoos it was like I have some sort of HIV for them, then instead of looking for solutions I was being questioned the meaning of every tattoo, yeah they come across very judgmental as F***, pardon my language.
So fast forward this Tuesday, I visited a second dermatologist and this time the diagnosis was Dermatitis atopic, they gave me some antibiotics for allergy and some ointment named Elidel based on pimecrolimus.
Now I know its only has been 2 days since I took the new treatment, but there has been no change so far and I am worried as hell, as for symptoms, it doesn't itch nor has swollen so far or anything else other than redness and dry skin.
I guess Its worth mentioned that I have asthma and I am allergic to some stuffs which I avoid and I used to have all sorts of allergies in the past but with all went away in within daysor a week. Never mind that, I had 4 successful tattoos before, therefore I don't know what is the anomaly here. I did take very good care of it, following the protocol, cleaning with antibacterial soap and still using Bepanthen ointment on it, same thing I did to the previous tattoos.
The tattoo was made on 18 october, there has been no improvements in almost a month on my skin and it drives me mad to the point of thinking worst case scenario; like removing it with laser as some cases suggested on the internet, just thinking about this stuff breaks my heart really, so if anyone experienced anything similar I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter or what treatment worked for you.
I will attach a photo of the tattoo and its redness around it, I would like to apologize in advance for writing such a long post.
PS. The redness is more prominent in real time than in the photo.
