I wish I could say I did it, bro, but it was done by a friend who, at the time, was only just getting into tattooing. He's in his fourties, so been an artist longer than I've been alive, but he only recently got into actually tattooing. If I recal, when he did that one, he'd been tattooing (on pig skin) four months, and only tattooing on people for four weeks (and then only a handful of people) Since then, his work has only come on in quality, and is even better than it was then. I think he could easily 'become a name' in tattooing, and make some good cash doing it, and he's the artist who will be doing my Japanese bodysuit when I can spare the cash.
You're absolutely right about the ointment. In the UK, we have one called Bepanthen, and that's what I used to heal that one up. It healed within a week, and as you say, no scabbing or itching