SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Over in Longwood, there is a tattoo artist most women hope they never need to visit.

Stacie Becker is a medical tattoo artist, and her work focuses on tattooing nipples for breast cancer survivors. She’s been doing it for years, and with each new tattoo inked she's helping give survivors closure after the fight of their lives. 

“There’s plenty of conventional tattoo artists but there’s not many people doing this, this is needed,” said Becker, who works at Empower Tattoo. 

Becker has been inking people’s bodies for years. But her work is sometimes considered a little taboo. 

“People try to say that maybe the nipple doesn’t matter but that’s the only thing that gets me banned on Facebook!” Becker said, laughing.

The part-time UCF art student and full-time medical tattoo artist focuses her artistry inking on nipples for breast cancer survivors. Becker has tattooed countless women. Her ink often marks the final chapter with cancer for many women. It is an experience, Becker said, that never gets old. 

“I finished with a woman and she looked in the mirror and she instantly covered herself up," Becker said. "She said, ‘I feel naked,’ she said ‘I have not felt naked in years.’"

Her work has built up a dedicated following over the years among breast cancer survivors coming from just down the road, others from out of state. Jeanette Martin made the drive in from Hallandale Beach near Miami, spending hours in the car just to meet with Becker.

“Well, I knew I was going to want to have something," said Martin, a breast cancer survivor. "With the bilateral mastectomy, they take the entire breast and the nipple. So what’s the point of going through the whole reconstruction process if you’re not going to complete it somehow?”

Martin connected with Becker quickly, deciding to trust her prowess with the needle and her passion for giving survivors like her comfort and closure.

“When I got back, the following day I immediately went to Cleveland Clinic and I was lifting my shirt up and showing all the doctors, like look at these! They’re amazing! They could not believe how realistic they looked,” Martin said. 

And after fighting to beat breast cancer, Martin then took on the fight to get medical tattoos like Becker’s covered by her insurance with United Healthcare. It was another battle she won. 

“It wasn’t about the money for me, I would have paid no matter what," Martin said. "But there are many people who don’t have insurance, there are many people who don’t have the resources or the means to have this closure that they need. And I don’t think an insurance company should stand in the way of that."

But not every insurance company is so willing to budge. 

“I mean, after everything they’ve been through? We still have to call and be the squeaky wheel and fight and argue," Becker said. "They’ll try to say you have to find someone in network, they’ll say who is in network? They’ll say we don’t have one. So here I am!”

Another problem, Becker said, is that there are few people out there who do this kind of work. Even fewer who do it well. It is why she is now working to establish medical tattooing as a certification program, to standardize the nipple tattoo process and make it easier for survivors to get it covered when they come in. 

“There’s a space for us. And we’re going to find it," Becker said. "There’s going to be some red tape and some bureaucracy we got to kick around but there’s enough people willing to listen that I think, it’s going to happen." 

Just like not every woman or every survivor is the same, every nipple tattoo she creates is different and unique. The marks she makes on these women’s bodies also marking the final chapter with cancer for many survivors, now ready to start their next chapter of life. 

“I’ve fallen in love with how it makes me feel to see the difference that it makes,” Becker said.