From Ink to Impact: A Burlington Tattoo Artist’s Cancer Journey 

In March 2025 I got an Instagram DM from my long-time tattoo artist, Kirsty McKenna, saying our appointment might need to move. She had a biopsy the day before and might be off work for a few days. I told her no problem and didn’t think much of it. She followed up after the procedure to move the booking to the following Sunday, and during that session she told me the biopsy was in her breast. I quietly knew that meant the doctors had found something serious enough to investigate further.

A few months later she announced on social media that she’d been diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer and would be off work for treatment and surgery. “I was at work when I got the call,” Kirsty told me. Her family doctor had the results and they weren’t what anyone was hoping for. She had just finished a client and was alone in the shop; she cried, called her mom, and went over to be with family. “We all — my mom, my dad, and I — we all had a little cry,” she said.

Kirsty was 38 when she was diagnosed, just two years shy of Ontario’s routine screening age for people without a close family history. What used to be thought of as an older-woman disease is happening in younger people now, which is one reason many provinces lowered screening ages in recent years. For Kirsty there was no close family history; she felt a lump in the shower and trusted that urgent, immediate action was the right response. She didn’t freeze. She wanted answers and a plan.

“I needed to know so I could deal with it,” she told me during our interview. That blunt practicality shaped how she moved through diagnosis and treatment: google, call the doctor, book tests, and get on with the next steps. “Worrying about having cancer might be worse than actually having it,” she said. “Now we know, let’s deal with it.”

Her cancer was hormone-receptor positive and HER2-negative. Complicated, but slow-moving. The disease had reached lymph nodes in her armpit, so doctors started with chemo to shrink things rather than immediately remove many lymph nodes. That decision meant Kirsty’s surgery ended up being much less invasive than originally feared: what could have been a double mastectomy became a small partial lumpectomy after the tumor responded to treatment. She did chemo from April to October, had surgery in December, and did daily radiation in January. A reaction to one chemo type briefly hospitalized her and required a medication change, but the new regimen worked. Most of her treatments were done right here in Burlington, at Joseph Brant. Only the radiation was done at Hamilton’s Juravinski. 

Kirsty is very direct about how fortunate she feels, both medically and in terms of support. Canada’s health system covered the expensive treatments she needed, which she says probably made survival more likely than it would have been elsewhere. Her [tattoo] shop, family, and community rallied: her boss, Time Will Tell Tattoo's owner Even Dowdell, ran an art sale, her mom prepared meals, her dad drove her to appointments and waited for hours, and she moved in with her parents while her brother took over her condo. “Everyone was so supportive and patient,” she said. “They told me to come in when I was feeling good, and that made a big difference.”

The personal costs were real: chemo induced menopause almost immediately and she’s on hormonal therapy now, which carries its own side effects and energy drain. She and her care team discussed fertility preservation briefly before chemo began, a conversation many younger patients face quickly and with little time to process. Follow-up care is close and ongoing, including frequent blood work and three-month check-ins while doctors monitor hormonal therapy and any signs of recurrence.

There were smaller, human things that mattered just as much. Kirsty found the biopsy and treatment painful but survivable; she describes herself as a trooper who appreciated the kindness of staff who used short, steady encouragement the way she now uses the same words when tattooing clients through long sessions. She laughed about wearing wigs — sometimes fun, sometimes awkward — and how hair grew back faster than she expected. She also spoke honestly about the mental load: screen addiction while recovering and the anxiety that comes with being self-employed and on contract without workplace benefits.

What she wants people to know is practical and simple: check yourself, don’t wait to ask your doctor questions, and treat a call-back seriously but not catastrophically. “Even if you get called back for a biopsy, it’s not the end of the world,” she told me. And she’s seen friends get tested and act early; that early action mattered for her.

Today, Kirsty channels that same resilience, creativity, and connection into her work as a tattoo artist. If you’d like to support her and see her incredible artistry, she works out of Time Will Tell Tattoo at 447 Locust Street in Burlington. Follow her on Instagram @TattooMiss to view her work or DM to book an appointment. 

Written by Allison Webster, Burlington Terry Fox Committee member