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On Jacqueline van Schaik’s flat chest, flowers and butterflies look away from the scars where her breasts once stood, a tattoo treasured like a “jewel” by this woman cured of cancer.
“That’s wonderful“, exclaims Ms. Van Schaik, 56, with tears in her eyes, when discovering herself in the mirror of a tattoo parlor in Lelystad, in the center of the Netherlands.I no longer see the scars, I see this, this jewel“, rejoices this mother of a young man of 17 years.
Radiant today, she says she has come a long way, she who underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy after being diagnosed in October 2020 with cancer in both breasts.
Darryl Veer, her tattoo artist, is part of a network of artists willing to help post-mastectomy women love their bodies again after seeing it change so drastically.
Around 1 in 7 women in the Netherlands will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, according to figures from the health authorities. In a third of them, a mastectomy is necessary, according to a website specializing in cancer.
This was also the case for Myriam Scheffer, 44 years old. She also wants a tattoo on her chest,”probably a large bird spreading its wings“, but his scars haven’t healed enough.
In the meantime, she created a foundation last summer to offer free tattoos to women after a mastectomy. Jacqueline van Schaik is the first to benefit from it.
The principle already exists, notably in the United States and France. The ambition of Myriam Scheffer, mother of an eight-year-old girl, is to develop the initiative across Europe.
“to find oneself beautiful”
Interested women can register from June with her foundation, Tittoo.org, to get a tattoo from October, the month dedicated to breast cancer screening awareness.
Thanks to the foundation, Italian and Swedish women will be able to do the same this year in Florence, probably, and in Stockholm, “where there is a very active group of +flatties+, of +flat women+“, Ms. Scheffer told AFP. She then hopes to develop the initiative in Belgium and Germany in 2024.
The foundation exclusively solicits tattoo artists who have already worked with scars, such as Darryl Veer, 36, visibly relieved after three sessions of several hours with Jacqueline van Schaik.
“I had the pressure because the last thing to do as an artist in a case like that is to miss“, he lets go, before adding: “It really is the most beautiful thing you can do with a tattoo, to make someone so happy.“.
Jacqueline van Schaik’s chest is now covered to the shoulders with two red flowers, the stems of which seem to take root at the end of the scars, accompanied by blue butterflies.
“To find yourself beautiful and to love yourself: it’s such a precious feeling and I had lost it“, confides Jacqueline van Schaik, full of emotion.
“Something essential is taken away from you, which makes you who you are, and that made me very sad.“, says this gentle woman with graying hair who suffered “every imaginable side effect” during her treatment.
To “rid“from cancer, she ended up opting for a mastectomy, performed in April 2021. But the loss of her breasts has”hurts a lot, physically and mentally“.
“Every day I stood in front of a big mirror when I got out of the shower and I looked at these scars and saw what had been taken away from me.“, she testifies. “I considered removing the mirror but now it can stay“, she smiles.