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Pain is an expected part of getting tattooed, which made it easy for a woman in Wilkes-Barres, Pennsylvania to dismiss what happened when she had both ankles inked in July 2023. Speaking to Newsweek, Skylar Jordan Linn shared that she chose a paper airplane for her left ankle and a butterfly for her right. Yet the butterfly was noticeably more painful to get. With nothing immediately pointing to a deeper problem, Linn tried not to read too much into the difference.
Ordinarily, discomfort around a fresh tattoo is hardly remarkable. The American Academy of Dermatology says soreness, redness, and swelling can accompany normal healing, while persistent or worsening pain can signal complications such as infection. Allergic reactions can also emerge long after the ink is applied, sometimes years or even decades later. In Linn’s case, however, the explanation was not in her skin at all.
There was already a clue buried in her medical history. In 2016, years before the butterfly tattoo, Linn had undergone an MRI because of leg pain. The scan identified a 1.4-centimeter lesion in her right fibula that doctors believed was a non-ossifying fibroma, a benign bone lesion particularly associated with children. With such lesions commonly resolving as children mature, it did not seem destined to become the defining medical issue of her twenties.
Years Later, the Pain Returned
The mystery resurfaced in early 2026 after Linn, then 24, went ice skating with her boyfriend for their anniversary. She had not skated in more than a decade and initially attributed the soreness afterward to the unfamiliar activity. But as the general aches disappeared, one precise area of her right ankle continued to hurt — the same place where the tattoo had been unusually painful.
That specificity sent Linn back to the paperwork from her old scans. She realized the painful area corresponded with the location of the lesion identified a decade earlier and raised the issue with her doctor. Linn told Newsweek that her doctor initially suspected tendinitis, but she remained convinced that the pain felt as though it was coming from the bone and pushed for an X-ray and another MRI.
The X-ray changed the picture. According to Linn, the lesion was now about 3 centimeters long, roughly twice its previously recorded size. She said further imaging showed that it had grown enough to expand the bone, leaving her concerned that the fibula was vulnerable to breaking. The discovery was frightening, but it also gave her something the unexplained pain had not: a tangible reason for what she had been feeling.
Why the Bone Lesion Was Unusual
Non-ossifying fibromas are generally far less ominous than the word “tumor” might suggest. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia describes them as the most common benign bone lesions in children, composed mainly of fibrous or scar tissue and typically nonaggressive. They commonly occur in the femur or tibia, and many are found accidentally when an X-ray is taken for an unrelated reason. Most require no treatment because they resolve as the skeleton matures.
Large lesions can be a different matter. CHOP notes that some people experience soreness, swelling or a dull ache, while particularly large lesions can weaken a bone enough to increase fracture risk. A 2026 review in the American Journal of Case Reports similarly noted that persistent non-ossifying fibromas in skeletally mature adults can present diagnostic challenges, especially when they grow or develop atypical imaging features. In such cases, physicians may need tissue analysis to distinguish a benign lesion from other bone abnormalities.
Linn ultimately underwent surgery in May. Doctors performed curettage, scraping the lesion from the bone, and filled the resulting space using allograft donor bone tissue. A biopsy was also performed. According to Newsweek, the tissue did not fit neatly into a specific diagnostic category at that stage, meaning the original belief that the lesion was a non-ossifying fibroma was not definitively confirmed by the surgical biopsy.
The Tattoo and Tumor Remain Separate Questions
The coincidence at the center of Linn’s experience is striking: her butterfly tattoo sat directly over the bone lesion, and that ankle had hurt much more during tattooing than the other. But Linn herself stressed that the tattoo and tumor were unrelated as far as established evidence showed. She has wondered whether tattooing the area could somehow have aggravated the existing lesion, including whether it might have contributed to bleeding and cyst-like changes, but described that as her personal theory rather than a medical conclusion.
That distinction matters because recognized tattoo complications generally involve the skin and immune response. Cleveland Clinic lists infections, inflammation, worsening soreness, and reactions to contaminated ink among potential problems, while the American Academy of Dermatology warns that delayed allergic responses can also occur. None of the supplied medical sources establishes tattooing as a cause of non-ossifying fibroma growth.
Linn shared her experience on TikTok, where Newsweek reported that her post had accumulated more than 300,000 views and 8,700 likes by the time of its report. She was still experiencing pain following surgery but believed it was part of the recovery process and hoped it would fade.