A mum who is covered with 'prison style' tattoos has admitted that she has no plans to stop getting inked even if her 'leg falls off'.
Tattoo addict Melissa Sloan, 45, has been getting inked repeatedly since the age of 20, and usually gets three 'prison style' inkings a week.
And the mum-of-two from Wales admits she finds it hard to get a job and has had skin infections.
Melissa revealed that she even carries a tattoo gun on her persons wherever she goes, and has little room to spare on her natural canvas because she gets her partner to ink on top of her older designs.
She has ignored her body's warning signs, as the amount of inkings covering her skin has seen it become prone to getting infected.
But the obsessed Welsh woman defiantly declares she will continue to get them done - even if she ends up losing a limb over them.
The mum told the Daily Star : "Some tattoos have never healed. The skin has fallen off and I’ll still get another one.
"You’re supposed to wait but I’m impatient so I’ll just keep having them done.
“Yeah I have [got them infected] and I’ll still carry on."
It got to the point that Melissa needed a course of antibiotics to fight the skin infection from her continual tattooing, with the mum admitting: “I do to go to the doctors for antibiotics as some got infected badly.
"I use clean needles but just somehow got infected."
Although Melissa had an infection to fight off, she said nothing was going to stop her from adding new additions to her vast collection she has already lost count of.
The mum declared that the infections: “Doesn’t bother me and it won’t stop me.
"I'll still carry on even if my leg was coming off – I will still have to have the tattoo done.
“I took antibiotics and I’ve got scars but the next couple of days I had another tattoo done.
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
Despite not being worried about losing a limb because of her love of tattoos, Melissa did show some concern about potentially being diagnosed with cancer.
She said: “I thought I was going to have blood cancer. I said to the doctor, is it dangerous where I’m going with these tattoos where I’m getting them every week and if I’m going over the limit.
“I asked him I’m going to get blood cancer from it. He said there was no evidence.”
Although there is no definitive evidence that indicates tattoos cause cancer, WHO (World Health Organisation) found that some chemicals in some tattoo inks could possibly be ‘carcinogenic’.
The Cancer Council charity states on their official website: “We are not aware of a reported cancer case directly attributable to tattooing.
“However, evidence does show that some tattoo inks contain carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) – chemicals that have been classified as known or possible carcinogens by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.”
