Tuesday August 12th, 2008 @ 4:19 PM
I have a 7 month old cautery brand on my forearm, down by my wrist. It has healed to the point where it has all turned white.
Except for a few random purple splotches. Sometimes they’re really evident, sometimes they’re almost gone. They are also not open wounds, or raised up - they’re flush with the rest of the scar.
My best guess is that blood pooled underneath the scar?
I’m going to see my artist ASAP, in two weeks, to see what he thinks, but I just wanted to get another opinion.
I have a five-year-old cautery brand on MY forearm, funnily enough, and it looked exactly the same for awhile during the healing! By the time it was a 12-18 months old, it had pretty much all settled down into the same colour of white scarring. I’m really not sure why it healed so unevenly - like you, there was no rhyme or reason to it, just the odd splotch of high-coloured scar tissue amidst the rest of the white scar tissue - but if I had to guess, I’d say yours will probably settle down over time, too. Seven months is really not long enough to assume that your scar will look like that forever, it’s pretty early days yet! 
+5 / 5 votes 
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Posted by Lori St.Leone | Permalink | 1 Comment
Wednesday July 30th, 2008 @ 10:40 PM
I’ve had my heart set on getting a fairly large branding on my back. It will mainly be on my spine. This may be a silly question, but I suppose it’s better to ask than not. Is there a chance such a branding might affect my spine in any way?
Other than the standard risks of branding- not really. You MAY have mobility issues depending on placement and how the brand heals, but there’s no danger in damaging the spine if you go to a professional.
+5 / 5 votes
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Posted by Shawn Porter | Permalink | Comments
Wednesday March 5th, 2008 @ 12:31 AM
Since I was a young kid, branding has always been a way to deal with certain kinds of stress. I remember being at a halloween party when I was 9 years old, and the people had those little candles on poles and lit a piece of hay letting it get red hot and then putting it on my hand out of interest. But as I got older, branding took over a different meaning. Back in september, I was really stressed out over finances, I thought my wife *at the time fiance* was pregnant, and I was at a dead end job. So, I did the branding on my upper right bicep. And it was fine, until about a month after I did it, it started to form a keloid. And since then, it’s just been a reminder of an unhappy moment where things weren’t as bad as they appeared. I was wondering if there are ways of having mod artists remove it? It’s about an inch long and it’s just one of those things where it’s not enormous, but it’s noticable to me, and I’d hate to have my future children ask me what it is.
To simply answer your question off the bat, yes there are certain mod artists out there who might feel they are skilled enough to do this procedure (see: http://modblog.bmezine.com/2006/10/06/when-scarification-goes-bad/). However I would strongly consider the fact that the majority of mod artists out there will not have performed this type of procedure, nor probably have the skill/understanding of what to do. My suggestion is to seek out a plastic/re-constructive surgeon instead, but you can source out a mod artist should you want to go that route.
The reality is that you currently have that scar tissue and the most you can probably do is reduce the scar, depending on the type of scar (how big,etc) you have, by surgical removal and then with the proper sutures and suture techniques.
However ask yourself this, why spend all that money go through all that surgical procedure, only to have a minimized version of the previous scar (that’s if the procedure goes smoothly,etc)…It will almost always be there in some form or another, so instead of focusing on the negative aspects of that scar…Why not focus on the positive?
As you said: “it’s just been a reminder of an unhappy moment where things weren’t as bad as they appeared.”
So by converting that brand from a negative, you can focus on the positive…That things are never bad as they may appear, and that you can overcome these trials and tribulations life throws at us. Instead you can use that brand as a means of giving you strength during very hard times….That no matter how hard you might think life is, you can simply look at that brand and say: “You know what? This isn’t THAT bad, things could always be worse!”
Just something to think about my friend, before you spend a lot of time and money in removing a larger scar, to be left with potentially a minimized version of its former self.
+4 / 6 votes 
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Posted by Warren Hiller | Permalink | 1 Comment
