Tattoos

I now sport three tattoos.

What?! Me have tattoos?

It's not a well-known side effect of treatment for cancer that you can get tattooed, but if the treatment is radiotherapy, then they have to measure you very carefully to be sure to aim the radiotherapy in the right place, and you have repeated doses of radiation day after day after day. So when they measure you, when they know just where to aim, they tattoo you so that they can use the tattoo marks to place you and to aim the radiation just right every day.

Another advantage of tattooing is that if years later you need to explain where you had the radiotherapy, the record is there on you in the tattoos, warning medical people that you've already had radiation to that spot.

I wonder what they do when they get patients in who are already so well tattooed that there's no room for a radiotherapy tattoo.

The tattoos are tiny - the size of a full stop on this page - my husband kindly tells me that one of mine looks like a blackhead. Thank you husband.