With her big hair and loud tattoos, Ms Rebekah Kong easily stands out in the crowd, even in Orchard Road.

The 29-year-old project manager has often been mistaken for a gangster moll because of the lurid peony and koi tattoos emblazoned on the right side of her body, from shoulder to thigh.

But she is just out to prove a point. She said of her extensive tattoos: 'I want to prove to myself that diabetes can't stop me from doing things I like.'

She was diagnosed with diabetes when she was five years old and takes daily insulin injections to control her blood sugar levels.

Diabetes is a disease which develops when the body is unable to regulate its blood sugar levels.

Diabetics are advised not to get tattoos as they should avoid cuts in their skin due to poor and protracted healing.

Ms Kong got her first tattoo, a 50-cent sized moon design, on her stomach when she was 17 and in London for a month on a design course.

Since then, she has spent more than $6,000 on transforming the right side of her body into a human canvas.

Her determination saw her preparing her body six months in advance before her peony and koi tattoos.

In the half year leading to her tattoo appointment, she made sure to keep her diabetes well in check.

She started exercising five times a week, experimented with her carbohydrate intake to find out how much she should eat to keep her blood sugar normal and ate more greens. She also switched to eating six small meals a day to better moderate her blood sugar levels.

Only after that did she go for the tattoo sessions. The initial sessions, which involved outlining and shading in the design, went off without a hitch. She took 10 days to heal after each session, well within the normal range.

But it took a year to complete the design as she could stomach only one hour of tattooing at a time.

She said: 'It was a torture and got more painful as the hour wore on.'

When the koi on her forearm was filled in with red tattoo pigments, she suffered an adverse reaction. Her skin took a month to heal and constantly oozed pus. She said it scarred, though she eventually healed.

Now she has set her sights on extending her tattoos down her right leg, an ambitious challenge as diabetics have to take extra care of their lower limbs due to poor circulation.

She said: 'My love for tattoos reminds me to take care of my body and myself better so that I can do the things I want.'

This story was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times, on May 7, 2008.