Not to beat anybody up, but you should inform your doctor of your plans. If you have CF you probably know what it takes to sterilize equipment. Iran is a medically sophisticated country and hopefully tattoo artists are licensed and inspected. Where you live, is an assumption from your profile but like any country these days, large cities tend to be similar all over the world and things get less consistent the further you get from urban to rural life. My guess is you live near modern hospitals and there is some infrastructure that extends to inspecting tattoo parlors.
Body art is extremely popular now and a movement has been growing rapidly for at least ten years. Pierced ears have given way to gauges an inch or 25 mm and larger. The trend is becoming more conservative. Maybe they dont want to become slaves to large gauges. You know best concerning the safety and sterilization methods or if you don't, enlist the aid of a knowledgeable friend to guide you.
Sterilization methods and sterile technique in making a successful tattoo involves using disposable, sterile needle sets. Needle sets are either made by the artist or more commonly made in a multitude of geometries by a specialized manufacturer. The latter arrives in a plastic package, already sterilized. The tattoo machine is sterilized in an autoclave, theyre made for it. These days the tattoo machine is in a sterile bag, the needles are sterile and the inks are made fresh. Fresh ink or mixed ink should be virgin, never used for another customer. If you can, inspect their facility and ask them to convince you everything is sterile.
To convince me it needs 20 minutes in an autoclave at 250 degrees F. or 122 degrees C. heated steam. Autoclaves by definition are steam sterilizers that operate under pressure. I have killed absolutely every bug from viruses to whatever bacteria you want, they are 100% for certain dead using the standard settings I have described. I didn't invent this absolute for proper sterilization, I leaned it in school. The metrics for steam sterilization was worked out about a hundred years ago and it is still reliable today.
I also tested it about a thousand times to make certain it really did kill my bugs. While in high school, I was working in the lab, late one night and to my surprise, I found a culture plate with Y. pesti or plague bacillus! A fellow student was doing a science project involving water filled plastic "ice cubes". They were imported back in the mid 1960's from Taiwan. They were the drinker's favorite ice cube for a while. The marble sized balls froze quickly and kept drinks cold without diluting it with water from a regular ice cube. The manufacturer didn't use sterile water and after so many repeated freeze and thaw cycles, they would split and leak into the drinks.
The storm from contaminated Ice Balls was huge! People were contracting everything from cholera to every water born bug in the pond. It had been reported that plague bacteria had been found in other Ice Balls. I made several plates using blood agar in hopes of catching something like Y. pestus. And I did! I called my teacher who called the County Health Department and they arrived in force about 11pm on a Friday night. The biology and chemistry departments were right next to the cafeteria kitchen. Needless to say the kitchen didn't serve food the next week and Monday the school was still closed. Not to toot my own horn, but there was absolutely no contamination. Sterile technique needs to be simple for it to be generally used without mistakes.
Assuming you have a perfect shop that meets your standards, the only real issue is insuring you don't contract an infection. Just like going to the dentist, depending on the risk you're prescribed antibiotics preemptively. This is possibly the best reason to inform your doctor of your plans. I'm suggesting that you don't have to ask for your doctor's permission. A non doctor is going to inject some pigments through thousands of needle punctures. A tattoo iron can execute 50-60 strokes/second or 3600 strokes an hour. Some needle configurations can bundle six or more needles. The point is somebody is poking upwards to 100,000 subdermal holes in an hour session.
If there's any doubt that you have been assaulted, a tattoo sized, mild scab forms. Usually they wrap or bandage the tattoo and apply a generous layer of antibiotic/antiseptic ointment. Overall you should have a good tattoo experience but if there's anyway to find public health records or maybe internet ratings on the tattoo artist/shop. Your doctor probably will give you preemptive antibiotics but the advice you may want is how to check out a shop. I would really push for the antibiotics. Use a trust but verify method if possible when selecting a tattoo artist. This may not be the time to choose the low bid.
Best of luck with your body art,
LL
