A Durban woman was inspired by cancer – a generational condition in her family, including herself – to start a paramedical tattooing business to help other people cope with scarring.
“This year I was diagnosed with stage 1 melanoma,” said Melanie Marshall, director and co-founder of Med Ink SA. “I’ve also had two family members diagnosed with breast cancer and my uncle with prostate cancer, all in a matter of weeks from each other.
“After three surgeries across six weeks, I’ve been cleared. My mother had died from lung cancer, her sisters had breast cancer. I’ve lost friends and clients to cancer, so it was personal.”
Having been involved in the beauty industry for 21 years, Marshall began cosmetic tattooing training in 2019. She added that through her personal experiences, she aimed to provide positivity.
She said she was inspired by other cosmetic tattoo artists using their skill to change lives. They developed paramedical tattooing methods to help people camouflage scars and burns, hair loss and restore areolas on breasts.
“I came across an initiative in Cape Town called Project Flamingo,, where a group of the country’s top surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses were raising funds and giving their free time to do life-saving mastectomies to those who could not afford it.
“I knew this was my calling. I saw how much we could aid in the next step to these same patients’ healing journey. It became my mission to one day become part of the solution and join hands with these doctors,” Marshall said.
After years of conceptualising and acquiring sponsorship, in 2022 she launched Med Ink SA, a pro bono (free) provider of the services offered by her organisation, The Nipstick Project, to people who couldn’t afford it.
“Mel_PMU is my private business and is a foundation/platform for my Nipstick Project. Where possible, I try to assist under my private business’s banner,” she said.
The Nipstick Project specifically focuses on areola restoration and scar camouflage for breast cancer warriors. She attributes the name of the project to Dr Liana Roodt, the director, founder and active surgeon of Project Flamingo, which focuses on breast cancer.
Marshall said: “Areola restoration is a treatment in which we use cosmetic pigments to tattoo a 3D nipple and areola onto the breast/ chest of a client, man or woman. It can be done to correct uneven colouring on a graft after a mastectomy or augmentation if the colour needs restoration or shape needs to be evened out.
“It usually requires two sessions 6-8 weeks apart, minimal downtime, then a colour boost or touch-up every couple of years, depending on how it fades. It varies from person to person.”
She added that surgical scars could also be improved, depending on individual cases, in conjunction with other techniques like needling or using flesh-toned pigments to camouflage them. However, there were limitations when dealing with compromised skin and scar tissue and she aimed for “better, not perfection”.
Marshall said areola restoration provided an alternative to areola regrafting.
“They try to save the original areola, regraft it under your arm, do the relative surgeries and then take that skin and put it in the same spot,” she said. The regrafted skin can present complications if it didn’t receive enough blood supply and could be prone to infection ‒ which may result in the cancer patient requiring more operations, which is more costly.”
Marshall uses donations to The Nipstick Project from people who have the means to donate and company sponsorships. Every month, she offers two patients this treatment at her own expense.
She acknowledged that the journey was difficult financially, and “filled with scepticism” because it was a new concept and people feared the unknown.
The Independent on Saturday