Tattos by HP or "What Do You Want Infected Today?"

MRSA is an antibiotic-resistant bacteria that fights off the body's immune system and destroys tissues. The community-associated variety, seen in the tattoo infections, has been diagnosed in otherwise healthy athletes, military recruits and prison inmates.

The skin infections can be transmitted from person to person by contact with draining sores, or through contact with contaminated items or surfaces. MRSA generally causes mild skin infections, but in some cases has led to pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and a painful, flesh-destroying condition called necrotizing fasciitis.

Clusters of MRSA cases were seen in Ohio in June 2004, November 2004 and April 2005, involving 33 people. A four-person cluster was reported in Kentucky in May 2005 and a seven-person cluster was in Vermont in August.

. . .all the affected customers went to unlicensed artists. Instead of doing the work in tattoo parlors, the body art was done in the homes of the tattooists or the recipients, or even in public places such as a park.

The tattooists sometimes did not use masks or gloves, did not properly disinfect skin and did not properly clean the equipment. One Ohio tattooist used a homemade tatto gun made from a computer ink-jet cartridge and guitar strings, LeMaile-Williams [a CDC infectious disease investigator] said.

The lesson here being that if you're going to go in for an unlicensed tattoo -- you rebel, you -- go dot-matrix. You won't regret it.

Okay, there's more than one lesson to be learned here. And I'm talking to the kids, now.

Kids, if your ink artiste has a draining sore, wait a while before letting him put that "Hello Kitty-flipping-the-bird" you designed in study hall over your appendectomy scar. I'd say one or two days, at least, time enough for it to scab over. After all, what's a couple of days? More important, you don't want all the attention your tatto should be getting focused on a suppurating chancre. Remember, boys and girls, good things come to those who avoid draining sores.

If you're in a situation where you can't wait, for fear that someone else might be the first to get that "Calvin-and-Hobbes Calvin pissing down your ass-crack" design, go ahead, ink away, but keep an eye on your hired-help's open wound. If it grows while he's disinfecting your tattoo site with a little spit and a vigorous rubbing from his well-loogied hankie, excuse yourself, and use the guy two park benches down. You'll thank me when you don't have the "necrotizing fasciitis," which is a high-falutin' way of saying, "flesh-eating bacteria."

Trust me on this.

P.S. Don't you just love "Dr. Kate Heilpern, an Atlanta emergency room physician and Emory University researcher who has studied MRSA." When she said, "We are still riding a big wave of this bacterial infection, . . ." I thought, "Man, I love a woman who's excited about her work."