A question about tattoos

[crimsonblue]

Tomorrow, I am going to go get my first tattoo. I plan on getting something small on inside of my left wrist, and I want it to be small enough that I can cover it up with my watch band.

My question is thus: how much will it hurt? I suspect that the wrist is not a particularly comfortable place to tattoo, but I'm hoping it won't be too bad.

[LeftyFingerPop]

1. Get put totally out, have it done in the hospital...

The pain is completely unbearable.

[DS1]

2. Well, oddly, it feels like someone sticking a needle in your skin a few hundred times a second

and scratching lines. Then to fill in the lines, they go back and forth and back and forth pausing to wipe away the blood.


It's not that bad

[Lucian]

3. Imagine a really bad sunburn and rubbing a ballpoint pen across it.

That's what getting a tattoo feels like.

[ghostsofgiants]

4. Not a bad description.

It's not as bad as you would think, though. I expected to hurt way more than it did.

[Lucian]

15. It didn't hurt at all.

[LeftyFingerPop]

5. Imagine having your nuts cut off with a rusty butter knife, with no numbing agent...

It feels exactly like that, only 100 times worse.

[ghostsofgiants]

6. It probably won't hurt as much as you're expecting it to.

Not that it won't hurt, but the anticipation always makes you think it will be worse than it is. Which is probably a good thing.

[MajorChode]

7. Getting completely drunk first is a great start

That's what I did when I had an "M" tattooed on each butt cheek.

It was definitely worth it because now I can bend over and spell "MoM".

[LeftyFingerPop]

8. I did that, only I used two "W's"

[crimsonblue]

9. I'd do that, but it's illegal to tattoo a drunk person in Kansas

Also, I'm sure your mother was very proud of you.

[Lucian]

16. Most responsible tattoo artists will refuse to give anyone who's drunk a tattoo.

[MajorChode]

17. Only 99.9% of them left to pick from

Bummer.

[Lucian]

19. The guy who did my tattoo will not tattoo drunk people.

[yellowdogintexas]

24. neither will my daughter. Alcohol in the blood stream has some sort of

negative effect on the clotting or healing or something. I just know she tells everyone 'don't come in here drunk and expect me to tattoo you"

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

21. Not around here

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

20. A good tattoo artist won't tattoo someone drunk or on drugs

[NJmaverick]

10. I hear it doesn't hurt any worse than being licked by a kitten

but what do I know? I don't have any tats

[SacredCow]

11. I don't have any....

but I've been considering one... I hear that it hurts at first, but after a minute or so you settle into an endorphin high and it's not so bad.

What kind of design are you getting? I've been thinking about getting Woodstock (as in the Peanuts character) on my inner ankle, with his loopy flight path the rest of the way around. I totally dig Woodstock and his beat-jazz coolness....

[jmowreader]

25. Some people don't have an endorphin response

I have one that took two and a half hours to apply. I'd always heard "oh, you get this endorphin high and it'll stop hurting."

Wrong, mother fucker: after about 30 minutes of the guy over there working his ass off (it's a unit crest, and I laid it out on a computer so there are a LOT of straight lines in it, which he was kind enough to get exactly right) I realized I don't have any endorphin response at all. And after two hours I'm thinking, "make time go faster."

[frogmarch]

12. I have a tattoo at the nape of my neck

right over a bone. Because of its location it bled a lot when it was being done, but the pain wasn't bad. The artist had tried to talk me out of having a tattoo right over a neck bone because he said it would probably hurt a lot. Maybe it didn't because I was expecting more pain than I actually got.

[Bake]

13. It's going to hurt like a mother!@#$#@

Especially on the wrist.

That's what I heard, anyway.

Bake

[unpossibles]

14. go for it. The inside of the wrist will hurt

and also don't wear the watchband over it until it's healed as it could get infected.

[Runcible Spoon]

18. hard to say. everyone is different on the weenie spectrum

Rule of thumb with tattoos: over fat hurts the least, muscle second, bone most. That will probably be a very tender spot. My tattoo is on my back along my spine and at the top where it was very close to bone it smarted quite a bit. Nothing near the pain of an ear infection or a broken bone, though. You kinda psych yourself out because you're choosing the pain.

[elocs]

22. My one and only tattoo is a good sized one I got about a year and a half ago.

Here it is (without the periods):

..........FREEDOM

..........FOREVER

The "V" logo is about 3 inches tall because I wanted it to be clearly recognized. It is on my upper right arm, it took about 45 minutes to do, and it was just pin prick painful--less than what I expected and it did scab over some for awhile. I had it retouched a month later (the red and the blood drops) and that did sting a lot because the skin was still tender.

A small tat on the wrist should not be bad at all.

[trof]

23. Aw man? Why?

:shrug:

[BarenakedLady]

26. I was going to get one there too

Except on the inside of my right wrist. I may change that to my foot now. I need to get a job.