Rook-Helix Orbital

At A Glance Author Fox Contact Fox@bme.anon Artist David Studio Absolution Location Christchurch, New Zealand

After 13 piercings in the last year I was starting to get a bit bored. My ears were rapidly starting to fill up and so I decided on one more piercing for each of them, to finish them off. For my right ear I decided on a rook-helix orbital. I'd been planning an upper-ear cartilage orbital for my other ear but changed my mind. That's going to get a tragus-conch industrial instead :)

SO back to my right ear. After a few weeks of planning I fixed the date for this afternoon, (Saturday) and realised that I could use an old piece of jewellery that had just been crying out for somewhere to put it through. (It had been the initial jewellery for my triangle but that sadly died on New Years day, RIP)

So I phoned up the only place in town to get pierced at, Absolution,(Christchurch, New Zealand) and fixed up an appointment. They said that they would numb it a bit too, which was a relief because I'm a wuss. I've had half of my piercings done without anaesthetic and they've all healed much better and been less traumatic than all of the other ones, which have been done without. (Except for my septum but they seem to be the easiest piercings to heal) So that's my reasoning behind using anaesthetic. So the time rolls around and I bowled on in to get David (the owner) to sterilise my BB and to generally sort out exactly what we were doing. After he looked at it and poked round he got his apprentice, Lori, who was featured on BME's front page recently and who will be piercing me for practice (yay! cheap piercings by a very cool chick), to emla me up and then I wandered off to meet my partner and his brother for lunch. After some excitement over an espresso machine that was going for an insanely cheap price in a store nearby I said goodbye to them and went to face the needle. By now there was the usual crowd of people looking through the clothing for sale and asking questions about getting their navels pierced, so I hung back and tried to look unobtrusive. Once the shop cleared out we went back to the piercing area. Lori was very keen to watch which was cool with me so we waited while she served a few people and then it was show time. While I faffed round being a bit nervous (my last cart piercing had been my snug without emla and it had been excruciating) David set up his area. Of course everything was spotless and there were multiple glove changes as required. Then the markings were done, it was a bit higher up my helix that I would have preferred but I realised that it would be better with the new markings because there really was bugger all helix to hold onto where I'd originally planned for it to be. So all was well.

I lay down on the table, unfortunately facing the tray with needles and got ready. Before I knew it the first needle was through and all I could feel was very firm pushing. I laughed at David's surprise because I'm usually a very bad piercee and then the second one was through too, with no more than some pressure. The most pain in the whole proceedings was when he put too much pressure on my snug! The jewellery fitting was very smooth and fast; I don't even remember it going in. He mopped up a bit as he'd opted to use 14ga needles and it was a 14ga piece of jewellery and although they sound like they're the same size they're not quite. The catheters on the needles are a bit bigger than 14ga and so this leaves a bit of room in the new hole. For cartilage David likes to do this because although it means a bit more blood (which isn't too much of a problem) it seems to result in faster, cleaner healing for the new hole. From my point of view they seem to feel better too, less tugging and smoother jewellery insertion. In a short time it was all done and I was the very happy owner of a new set of holes. The piercing is now about an hour and a half old and the anaesthetic has definitely worn off. It's got a minor dull ache and it feels hot.

I'll soak in salt water in a while but other than that, I'm planning to keep it clean, keep my hands off it and generally leave it alone. Once it heals I plan to wear a ring in it or maybe a horseshoe ring as I think it may need to be twisted slightly to sit properly in the new holes.

A year ago all I had was lobe piercings. Now I'm up to my 20th piercing and I also have a tattoo and some scarification work. Even today, with fresh holes, I'm planning when I get my next piercing, which will be a nape. This one is a little scary to me as it's the first surface piercing I've got but I'm really excited about it too. Maybe in a month's time once this one's settled in...