Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, Monica Hollenbeck saw only scars after receiving a double mastectomy. After receiving 3D nipple tattoos, she sought to get her own tattoo license.
“I can do mastectomy tattoos for cancer patients. I can do top surgery. I can camouflage scars if they bother you. I can lighten scars if you have dark scars and I can camouflage stretch marks,” Hollenbeck explained.
She is now helping patients see past their own scars at her office on Posada Lane in Templeton. She created a website, Restored By Ink,to show future patients her before and after photos and start her portfolio.
“I call it the magical moment," Hollenbeck said when patients see their scars disappear. "I get a lot of crying, you know, because it is very emotional to go from feeling not confident at all in your body to looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling like a woman again.”
She tells me she's tattooed upward of 20 cancer survivors since 2022.
“Monica, being a survivor sister, is totally aware of everything that's going to be emotionally difficult, physically difficult," said survivor and client Brooke Parker.
Parker says the 20-minute procedure changed her life for the better.
“I had had a double mastectomy, reconstruction, but I was looking in the mirror and feeling like a Frankenstein," Parker said of her appearance before the 3D tattoo.
After battling breast cancer in 2007, Susan Hull's daughter was also diagnosed with what she thought was a clogged milk duct turned out to be stage 3 breast cancer. The mother of two was breastfeeding her one-year-old before she finally went to the doctor.
“She had a horrible backache," Hull said of her daughter. "We took her in and she had a tumor at the base of her spine and within the year, she was dead. That's my youngest daughter. So I survived and she didn't.”
According to local surgeon Dr. David Bolivar, he's seen a rise in cancer diagnoses in younger women over the past few years, which he attributes to a combination of earlier diagnoses and poor diet.
"It really surprises me how tough people are and how tough women are with all of this," Dr. Bolivar said. "I think there's a lot of environmental factors in everything that are contributing to it — diet, food sources and, you know, toxins.”
Hull now advocates for younger women to get screened and says the tattoos have made a difference in her everyday life.
“What Monica did for me is, when I looked in the mirror every day, I just saw cancer and my daughter and when she did the tattooing, that all went away," Hull said. "I just saw Susan.”
You can find Hollenbeck at 292 Posada Ln. Suite C on Fridays.
Video Credit: Chris Thompson, Sky's The Limit Media
