A hand in so much: Certified hand therapist’s multiple talents include tattooing for breast cancer survivors

Clinician spotlight: Donna Harvat

Donna Harvat laughs at the assertion she is a renaissance woman. Or a boss lady.

“I’m just very active,” she says.

That explanation holds to an extent.

Donna, 63, is a Select Physical Therapy occupational therapist and certified hand therapist.

She stays active in typical, age-60-something ways. She plays pickleball. She kayaks. She sews. She creates art. She putters around the house.

Peel back the curtain, though, and Donna is operating on another level.

That sewing she does? 

It’s creating American Civil War-era gowns that she wears annually to formal, re-enactment balls in Gettysburg, Pa.

The art? 

She tattoos eyebrows, eyelashes and areolas onto the bodies of breast cancer survivors.

The house-puttering?

She is working with a contractor to remodel her 100-year-old home. She’s physically tearing up flooring, cutting up tiles and ripping up carpet. All while she is working two jobs in the health care industry – spreading joy, hope and healing to two vastly different patient populations.

So, she’s active, yes. But there is so much more to Donna’s story, her talents, her drive.

“She is such a go-getter,” said Joanne Book Coles, who twice has been a patient of Donna’s. “She throws herself all-in with whatever she does. And the patients she has benefit from that.”

Dress up for adults

Most of Donna’s passions begin with a simple statement: “Well, that sounds fun. That’s what she thought when she first heard about a tea party her friend was helping to organize, one in which everyone dressed in 19th century clothing. She attended. And was hooked.

Donna borrowed vintage clothing for that first event but wanted to make her own going forward. She has been sewing since she was 3, when she’d climb onto her mom’s lap and push fabric through the machine while her mother controlled the foot pedals. So, it couldn’t be that hard to design and create a gown, she figured. She has now made three and counting.

With the help of a friend, Donna drapes muslin, a plain-weaved, cotton fabric, onto her body to establish the correct fit, and then places silk on top of the muslin and sews them together. She estimates it takes about 16 hours to create the bodice or top of the gown.

Donna constructs the skirt separately and then fastens the two parts, so it appears to be one, flowing dress. She adds embellishments and hand sews details – it probably takes 60 total hours of work until completion.

Then, every November, Donna and friends rent a house in Gettysburg, wear their Civil War-era-style clothes and attend Remembrance Day weekend, which marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address speech. There’s a Friday night ball and several activities on Saturday, including another formal dance, an afternoon tea, a parade and an illumination ceremony in the Gettysburg National Cemetery commemorating the bloodiest battle on U.S. soil.

“It's like stepping back in time, and everybody acts as though it's the period. And the gowns are beautiful, so you feel pretty fancy,” she said. “It’s just kind of dress up for adults. It's a great experience.”

When Donna works with her patients, she rarely mentions her dressmaking, but she posts pictures on social media about it on occasion. That’s how her supervisor, Kevin Johnson, discovered Donna’s hidden expertise.

“It’s pretty awesome. That takes some talent,” Kevin said. “She has these talents she likes to put forth, whether it’s just for her own creativity or whether it’s to help people. That’s where Donna stands out.”

Building confidence with tattoos

About a decade ago, Donna watched a news program featuring a feel-good story about a tattoo artist in Baltimore who offered micropigmentation procedures to breast cancer patients. He tattooed eyebrows, eyeliners and even areolas on the bodies of women who had lost their hair or had their breasts surgically removed as part of their cancer treatments.

Through connections at the UPMC Breast Care Center in Harrisburg, Donna asked the center’s director whether it offered such a service. She was told no. She followed with another question: “Would you want to offer it?”“ I said I’d be willing to go to school to learn how to do it, because I’m artistic. And (the director) thought that was a great idea,” Donna said. “Within three weeks of that conversation, I was at school for six days in New Jersey to do the makeup part of it, the eyeliner, eyebrows and lips.”

A month later, Donna went back to learn how to do 3D areola tattooing. The rest is Breast Care Center history. For the past 10 years, Donna has worked part-time every Tuesday tattooing at the UPMC facility, where she helps cancer survivors build confidence.

“When they look in the mirror and see their face, and they don't have eyebrows. And then, all of a sudden, they have eyebrows. Or eyeliner, because they didn't have eyelashes,” Donna said. “Getting out of the shower and just catching a glance of yourself, if you see nothing, you can imagine the emotional toll that takes. They don't feel whole, and so this gives them back that sense of self, that wholeness.”

The patients who Donna tattoos have completed surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy and their cancer is in remission. They can come shortly after treatment ends or several years down the road. Typically, the tattooing needs to be refreshed every two years.

It’s free for survivors. All they need to do is sign up and show up. 

“It’s so rewarding.” Donna said. “People will ask me, ‘Can I tip you?’ And I’m like, ‘No, just give me a hug.’”

The aftereffects of cancer

Joanne first talked to Donna on the phone before she became her patient. 

In 2023, Joanne, a trust and estate attorney, was diagnosed with breast cancer during her annual mammogram. Initially, doctors thought she may need minimal radiation and likely no chemotherapy. But Joanne had a family history of breast cancer. To be safe, she had a double mastectomy – months after her 50th birthday.

Additionally, three of her lymph nodes tested positive for cancer, so she underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy, followed by two months off and then six weeks of radiation. 

During that time, she heard about the tattooing service the Breast Care Center offered and inquired, phoning a woman about the possibility. Since she was still taking antibiotics, and medication can interfere with micropigmentation effectiveness, she was told to a wait a few more months. Joanne was more than a year removed from surgery when she had the procedure for her eyebrows, which she first had stenciled on after chemotherapy.

“You think about losing your hair and you’re focused on the head part. But they have wigs and hats for that,” Joanne said. “I was never a big makeup person. I particularly don’t wear a lot of eye makeup. And it’s harder to hide the (facial) signs of having cancer. You can tell when somebody has drawn on an eyebrow or if somebody has fake eyelashes.”

While waiting for the micropigmentation procedure, Joanne dealt with scar tissue buildup and lymphedema, the swelling of limbs due to an excess of fluid in the body’s tissues. She initially saw a lymphedema specialist at Select Physical Therapy Arlington and then shifted to Donna, a certified hand specialist who worked on the range of motion in Joanne’s arm and shoulder and applied a pressure-based (myofascial) massage to break up her scar tissue.

“She was very good at it,” Joanne said. “It would hurt when she did it, but I felt she really dug in and made a real difference in how I felt.”

It took Joanne a bit to realize her new therapist was the woman she had spoken to months before about tattooing. A woman who would soon make an even bigger difference for Joanne.

Excelling at building relationships

In their first micropigmentation session together, Donna tattooed eyebrows on Joanne. First, she applied numbing cream, then waited about half an hour before beginning the 45-minute procedure. It looked natural initially, but Donna warned that, as the area healed, the brows would become extremely dark for a week or so.

“She told me that and I knew that was going to happen. However, seeing it was a little bit much, so I was horrified,” Joanne laughed. “I thought I looked like Groucho Marx or a Muppet.”

Donna was right. Within a week, Joanne’s eyebrows had healed and blended naturally with her hair color. Now, two years later, most don’t realize Joanne’s eyebrows and eyelashes – technically, the skin directly around her eyelids – are tattoos.

“Most people don’t have a clue,” Joanne said. “Some of the people who have known me my whole life couldn’t tell.”

Joanne said she wasn’t nervous about the tattooing. Because she fully trusted Donna. She experienced her work ethic first-hand as an occupational therapist. She knew how talented she was as an artist. Most important, Joanne got to know Donna as a person.

“She really cares about her patients, and not just about the one thing she is working with them on,” Joanne said. “She cares about them holistically, how her patients are doing as people, how they are feeling.”

Donna is among the most accomplished certified hand therapists in central Pennsylvania; she received her hand therapy certification in 1990 and has treated thousands of patients since. She often works with return customers dealing with a new ailment or referrals from those she helped years ago.

Kevin, her boss at Select Physical Therapy, said he recently had a new patient who was dealing with shoulder pain. She scanned the center and noticed Donna on the other side of the room.

“She said, ‘I saw Donna eight years ago for a hand issue. I’m going to go over and say ‘hi’ to her.’ And I said, ‘Yes, please do,’” Kevin recalled. “She’s very compassionate. She’s very good with words. She’s very good with people, and that’s what patients keep coming back for, right?

“It’s more than just the hand therapy. It’s the communication, the getting to know each other, the building of relationships, which is what I think she excels at.”

Donna is a pickleball player, a dressmaker, a tattoo artist and an amateur home contractor. In a few years, she’ll surely have another hobby or interest to add to her renaissance woman resume. There is one thing, though, that she can’t envision herself becoming.

“I don’t see myself retiring any time soon,” she said. “I just love what I do.”