RICHMOND, Va. -- Kristin Peck Capece creates delicate and detailed works of art.
“I'll put a little dot where I want my light come," Peck Capece said.
Her practice canvas is a pound of synthetic flesh.
“It does have the feel of actual tissue,” she said.
She has mixing colors down to a science.
“If I get new pigments, there are nipples all over my house," she said.
Peck Capece owns Virginia's first and only Areola Restoration Center.
“I really felt it was a place for women to go to have privacy, be comfortable and have someone who understands what their needs are,” she said about her West End business.
The center is solely dedicated to the area around the nipple. Most of her clients are breast cancer survivors who have gone through treatment and are now living with the aftermath of cancer.
“I'm not putting a heart or butterfly on their breast. We're going to make it as to what they envisioned themselves with an areola,” Peck Capece said.
“I'm 47. I'm going to be fine and I wasn't,” Barbara Thorpe, who was diagnosed with breast cancer on Halloween in 2012, said.
She had a lumpectomy and radiation. In 2018, she battled uterine cancer. Then in 2020, she was diagnosed with another breast cancer.
“Just have to get rid of it and move on. I mean I'm going to be here for my child,” Thorpe said about the cancer.
Thorpe had a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery, but something was still missing.
“There's nothing there anymore. You lose your sense of being a female. Just had these nice round things, but they didn't look like breasts,” Thorpe said.
Thorpe's surgeon recommended getting a three-dimensional tattooed areola at Kristin's restoration center.
It changed everything.
“The first thing I told her was I’m going to Mardi Gras and get some beads. I was kidding. That was the first thing I said because I was so excited,” Thorpe said. “I look at myself now. I didn't do that before."
“Cancer doesn't care. Anybody can get cancer,” Lisa Klein, the owner of a health and wellness program, said.
She had no symptoms or risk factors when her breast cancer was discovered during a routine mammogram last year. Her double mastectomy and second surgery led her to look for other reconstruction options.
“I had no idea what to expect,” Klein said.
But just like Thorpe, it was a welcomed change.
“It really wasn't until she said stand up and look in the mirror and kind of hit me and said 'wow,'" Klein said.
Years of schooling got Peck Capece to this point. Eight years ago, she took a leap of faith and walked away from her corporate medical job.
“I wanted to reinvent myself. I wanted to do something that has some meaning,” Peck Capece said
The part-time professional makeup artist turned to permanent makeup.
She's board certified and insured. She spends hours practicing and learning her craft. All in an effort to get the size, shape, color, and positioning just right.
“They stand up and look at themselves and they kind of pop. I'm like yes. That's the goal,” Peck Capece said.
The price of 3D tattoo at the restoration center runs from $450 to $650.
Peck Capece spends a lot of her time educating women about the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998. The federal law provides protection to patients who choose reconstruction after a mastectomy. That includes providing mandatory healthcare coverage for areola restoration and other reconstruction services.
The Areola Restoration Center is located at 8501 Mayland Drive Suite 108.
Kristin Peck Capece can be reached at 804-716-9804.
