By BECKY THOMAS
Staff Reporter
Sometimes it takes a hard lesson to turn your life around.
For Gary Short, a stroke last fall left him partially paralyzed and unable to do what he loves. Through months of frustrating rehabilitation and lifestyle changes, the local tattoo artist has regained much of his dexterity and is back practicing his art.
Short, owner of Cheney's Body Language Tattoo, is a tall, heavily tattooed 50-year-old. He says he used to play up the “tough guy” lifestyle, staying up late, drinking and partying. He didn't think about his physical health, he said, until one day last October he woke from a nap and was unable to walk.
“I woke up and it was a totally different world. It's like I couldn't walk proper; I couldn't talk. Everything was just disoriented, weird,” he said. “I had to brush my teeth left handed and I could barely get the job done.”
Something was wrong, but Short thought he'd tough it out, thinking it would go away.
“In the morning it was worse. I couldn't walk or talk or anything. I couldn't sign my name or anything like that.”
His wife Pam made him go to the hospital, where he was immediately admitted and treated for a stroke, likely caused by high blood pressure.
Short spent two days in the hospital, where his body continued to fail him.
“I was helpless,” he says, remembering how he was unable to lift his leg to climb a stair, to write out the alphabet or to correctly pronounce words.
Doctors told him he may never tattoo again, but he refused to believe it.
Short has been a tattoo artist since the age of 18. He learned by doing as a young man in Oklahoma, making his first machine himself since tattooing was “kind of illegal” there at the time. He later opened a tattoo shop in Wenatchee before starting Body Language in Cheney in 1997.
“I love tattooing, it's cool,” he said. “It's way better than working.”
Short said he drifted a lot through his early life, but he set roots in Cheney with his wife and two children.
“I like it here. It's a nice mellow town and it was a good place to raise kids.”
One of his kids, 26-year-old Brandon, followed in his father's footsteps and now tattoos at Body Language as well.
It was family, along with his own love of tattooing, that led Short back to his shop the day he left the hospital, less than a week after his stroke.
“I came to work. I couldn't do anything but I figured the work atmosphere would be good for me.”
He spent those first days and weeks trying and failing to pick up pens, stepping over floor tiles, anything he could think of to bring his body back to normal.
“I would answer the phone,” he said. “It's a wonder I didn't run customers off because to say ‘Body Language Tattoo' is very hard when you've had a stroke.”
Once he was able to grip a pen, he started tracing the pattern of the last tattoo he'd done before the stroke, determined to regain his skill.
“Every day I drew that pattern,” he remembered. “Months went by and I still couldn't follow the lines. It was really frustrating and hard to do. Finally all of the sudden I started being able to follow the lines and I started being able to do my fine motor skill stuff.”
As the months passed, Short felt the numbness leave his arms, hands, legs and face. He also changed his lifestyle. Before the stroke, he said he went through a can of chewing tobacco and a 12-pack of beer every day. Afterward, he quit cold turkey.
“Everything is structured now. I eat right, I don't drink, no nicotine, I eat my medicine on time,” he said. “I do everything they tell me to do.”
Meanwhile, he kept drawing the pattern, improving with time and repetition. Soon, he was itching to transition from paper and pen to skin and ink. In February he did his first tattoo since the stroke, “and it was perfect,” he said.
He's been tattooing again ever since. Sometimes when he tells the story, people say it must not have been a bad stroke.
“I think that age has a lot to do with it. I think determination has a lot to do with it. I love what I do here, so that has a lot to do with it. I've tattooed since I was a kid. This is pretty much the only thing I've ever done. It's my love. It's my passion, so I've got to get back to it.”
Short said if he hadn't had the stroke, he would never have changed his lifestyle. The experience changed his perspective on life, he said.
“All these stubborn old guys around that think they're invincible, we're not! I'm just as tough as any guy around, but that s--- there will knock you to your knees.”
Short is back tattooing alongside his son. Short admits that Brandon has more skill at tattooing now than his old man, but he's not jealous, he's proud.
“I'm in this shop all the time and I hear so many stories of people who have had strokes,” he said. “I don't know too many people who have as successful a story as I do. A lot of it is totally due to my family supporting me. They stood by me when no one else was there, for sure.”
Body Language Tattoo is open at 507 First St. Tuesday through Saturday from 12-8 p.m. For more information visit >ww.cheneybodylanguagetattoo.com or call (509) 235-8666.
Becky Thomas can be reached at [email protected].
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