Getting the compass removed
Nineteen months of laser to retire a tattoo that had been pointing confidently in the wrong direction since 2017.
The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains why it takes so long.
A laser does not remove ink. It shatters it. A pulse lasting a few billionths of a second breaks each pigment particle into fragments small enough for your immune system to finally notice — because the reason a tattoo is permanent is that the particles are too big to carry away, so your body gives up and builds around them.
The fragments then leave over the following weeks. You do not remove a tattoo. You persuade your body to take an interest in something it decided to ignore four years ago, and then you wait six to eight weeks and do it again.
Eleven times
Black goes first and goes well. The grey wash Marek had laid under the northern points was stubborn. The fine linework — the good linework, the part I had been proudest of — was hardest of all, because there is so little pigment in any one place for the laser to find.
On the pain, I will say only this. Getting the tattoo took four hours and I read most of a book. Each removal session takes ninety seconds and I have never read anything.
We stopped at ninety-four per cent because the remaining six was not worth another nineteen months.
There is a faint grey shadow left, about the size of a playing card. If you know it is there, and the light is behind you, you can still make out east on the left.