My radiation was put on hold for two days.

Two days further behind schedule because my radiation marks had shifted and warped. Rather than a thin, straight line so my doctor could pinpoint my treatment down to the millimeter, I had a pudgy, drunken curve covered in the gooey remnants of tape.

I was using various oils to help protect my skin from the dreaded radiation burn. Calendula oil, organic aloe, and lavender essential oil diluted in coconut oil. It was a process that took a half-hour or more as I gave time for each layer to soak into my skin before adding the next. A half-hour of running around the house topless between applications, making coffee, checking email, letting the dogs outside and praying my neighbor wasn’t in his backyard when I opened the door and my uniboob swung out.

My collection of radiation marks, with the irritation rash starting to form around my lymphadenectomy scar.

It’s a fine line to walk when using oils or creams to help soothe radiated skin during treatment. Not enough moisturizers and my skin dries out and hurts; too much and I’ve messed up the alignment marks.

Not surprisingly, Sharpie lines protected by tape are no match for oil, not even with heavy-duty medical tape. And though I had reduced the amount of oil used and only applied the regimen once a day instead of twice, the radiation team was regularly reminding me to be careful not to get oil near my marks and mess them up.

Spoiler alert: I messed them up.

I mean let’s be honest, Sharpie and tape are not an impenetrable force field. They’re going to be messed up, guaranteed. I do agree that often the best solution is the simplest, and one could argue that Sharpie is the simplest solution in outlining a treatment area. But I still get a chuckle out of the idea that we have this incredible medical technology packed into a machine that literally spins around you (it’s seriously the coolest thing to watch), all for the humble price of $3 million … and yet we’re outlining this machine’s target area with a $1.25 marker and protecting it with a little circle of tape.

Because my marks were so messed up, it was back to the drawing board with another CT scan and another radiation plan. It’s a process that takes a couple days. A couple days of no treatment.

I was frustrated, to say the least.

But I was given an alternative: my alignment marks could be tattooed on next time.

Getting my very first tattoos

In an effort to preserve the Sharpie marks for the week between the recent CT scan and the tattoos, I reduced my usage of oils and moisturizers further. I didn’t want to postpone treatment again by messing up these new marks! But in the first three days of only applying moisturizers once a day instead of three times a day, my skin started to break out in a rash – a precursor to radiation burn caused by friction against the skin. Whether it was the reduction in oils or just the cumulative effect of radiation treatments, my skin was starting to show signs of irritation.

Before beginning radiation, I had read on social media about the marks being tattooed. I knew it was a thing, I just didn’t know it was a thing at my local hospital. Maybe my doctor hadn’t mentioned it before because so many people, perhaps especially women, are concerned about permanent marks or scars. There are products and articles all over the place about how to minimize the appearance of scars, and medical scars especially seem to have a bad rap. After all, synonyms for the word “scar” include words like blemish and disfigurement, which gives us the impression that scars are something to hide or be ashamed of.

I call nonsense.

A few years back I read the novel Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Admittedly I wasn’t a huge fan of the book overall (to each her own), but I friggin’ loved the quote about scars:

I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

I’m not opposed to new scars or marks at all. In fact, after my lymphadenectomy I was rather proud of the fact that I’d have matching armpit scars – the right arm counterpart being from a rib resection related to thoracic outlet syndrome. (I swear there was a time when I was healthy! I used to hardly ever need medical attention. But apparently my warranty expired when I turned 30….)

I wish I had known from the beginning that tattoos were an option. I wish I had been given the choice of having my marks done in Sharpie or with tattooed ink. I totally would have opted for the tattoos. Besides, dudes like inked girls, right?

I’m not concerned about having more scars or marks on my body. Heck, gimme a whole mess of em! Especially when I found out they only looked like freckles. That’s it? Just dots? Well then shoot, put all the dots you want on me. After treatment I’ll go to the tattoo shop down the road and have all my radiation dots turned into flowers – petite little flowers that show life blossoming out of my damaged radiated skin.

I’ll have a constellation of scars.

And those scars mean that I’ve survived.