The Magic Mike star spent seven years battling a mystery illness that removed part of his intestines. Now, he’s turned those scars into a striking tattoo.
Joe Manganiello is embracing his scars and turning it into a work of art.
As the Magic Mike star continues to recover from a gripping seven-year battle with a mysterious auto-immune disease, the actor unveiled a one-metre long dragon tattoo he had inked over his surgery scars in an attempt to reclaim control of his body and health.
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“The idea to cover my surgery scars with my first tattoo, a three foot [one metre] dragon down my right side, was my effort to take back what little agency I felt that I had, and to signal to my body to stop attacking the dragon … because the (eastern) dragon was me,” he explained on Instagram as he shared four photos of the tattoo process from start to finish.
The photos revealed 49-year-old Manganiello’s fresh tattoo runs down the right side of his body, from his abdomen all the way down to his knee.
The black and red dragon’s head starts above the actor’s belly button with its body then snaking down past the actor’s hips before its tail curls up and ends just above the right knee.
In all four photos, Manganiello holds a towel around his waist as he tries to show his followers the elaborate design, which happens to be his first ever tattoo.
To this day, the actor is seeking answers on the mysterious disease that plagued him for seven years, which began around 2016 when he experienced excruciating abdominal pain that left him unable to walk and his digestive tract ulcerated.
Manganiello underwent several colonoscopies, and eventually had part of his intestines removed, but that caused further problems for the star who was left unable to use the bathroom and relied on an ostomy bag.
He also experienced fevers, blistering rashes, headaches, fatigue and a dramatic 60lbs (27kg) weight loss.
Manganiello opens up about the life-threatening disease in his new memoir, Bloodlines, released earlier this month, with actor writing that to this day doctors cannot explain the sickness that attacked his thyroid, digestive system, skin, lungs and eyes.
When Western medicine failed him, the True Blood star turned to alternative practices involving shamans, pagan rituals and spiritual work, eventually clawing his way back to health.
Last week, the actor also posted heartbreaking, never-before-seen photos of himself in hospital in the midst of his mystery illness.
“TRIGGER WARNING. In the days following the amputation of my large intestine, my weight began to plummet,” he captioned the carousel of images on Instagram on Thursday.
“I would ultimately lose a total of 60lbs [27kg] during the two weeks following the surgery,” he added.
“If you zoom in, you can see the top of my first ostomy bag creeping up over the sheets,” he claimed, referring to the photo of him sitting shirtless in a hospital chair.
Manganiello then described the second photo, which showed a close-up of his “abdomen after the reconnection/take down surgery or anastomosis, in which my ostomy bag was removed and what was left of my digestive tract was reconnected”.
The Spider-Man actor said the third snap showed the “multitude of skin conditions I was plagued with during the seven years I was sick”.
“My skin, an immune organ, was stricken with just about every condition known to man, usually in combination,” he wrote of the images, which showed red rashes all over his face.
