Ok this is about my multiple ear piercing experience. I had both my left and right ears pierced, the left side with three descending 1.6mm rings going from small at the top to large at the bottom. The right side there was a slight problem, I chose what I, and the man on the desk thought was a 1.6mm bent barbell which was O.K. until Lez the piercer slid in the needle in and left in the plastic insertion sleeve. Then picking up the jewellery to slide it in, only to find it didn't fit, then he muttered "Oh shit" in his amusing cockney dialect to himself and told me it was the wrong size. This obviously was quite worrying but I trusted him. He said he was going to have to just push it through, so he did. It didn't hurt that much anyway. He did all this in a split second so I t wasn't exactly horrific pain or anything. So overall I came away with three 1.6mm BCR's in descending size on my left lobe and a 2mm barbell on the right, also he was kind enough to pierce my forearm for nothing because I asked him what it was like and that I was interested, so he just did it. But that's another experience though!
At A Glance Author Frazer Contact physcoburl2@hotmail.com Artist Lez Studio Tribal Tattoo's Location Barrow-in-Furness, U.K. So yeh, now comes the stretching part. After a few weeks the ears healed great and I was at a massive rock festival in England to see RANCID (greatest band ever!) and I bought a carved bone tusk (about 5mm at thickest point) for my still unstretched bottom left lobe piercing. I chatted to the woman behind the stall and she said take time to do it but after stretching my right side up to 5-6mm over a few days I decided under a slightly intoxicated mind to do it there and then. So I sat down fumbled around with the BCR and popped the ball out into my already perspiring hand, then took the bone with the two rubber holding rings around it slid them both off and begun. I fiddled around with the point to find the hole, which was quite difficult without a mirror, and then started to push it in. I felt it begin to stretch slightly then starting to resist so I pushed a bit harder, the pain starting to burn a bit now, and harder it moved further down the tapered bone. It was really resisting without any sort of lubrication to ease it on, but I carried on and after about 5-10 mins it was in. The pain of this compared to an actual piercing is quite different you just get that throbbing, burning felling, as if your ear is a lot bigger than it actually is! But it was OK, until of course I went down the front for RANCID, I made sure to protect it from the flailing arms and legs but some cunt was crowd surfin and they got thrown at my head and bashed me into this beefy guy's back. Which of course caused my freshly stretched and tender ear to bleed profusely, ouch! So it'd split the side of the hole, I wasn't amused. I went to get it cleaned up at the medical tent where they weren't much help but hey I brought it on my self. My ear was crusty with blood for the rest of the weekend and very tender.
So I got back from the festival a couple of weeks later and the wound was healing nicely, but then someone at work said "What's with all them white spots all over your ear?" I was like shit I dunno, so I checked it out, and there they were like blackheads but white and on my ear. I thought nothing of it but just kept and eye on it, a few days later though it began to itch and get worse so I took out the bone. I thought this must be the cause of the rash, as when the pierced hole with the porous surface of the bone would hold bacteria and infection easier so I put in three 1.6 BCR's. The weird rash subsided over a few days and now I have an acrylic claw through the hole until it heals properly. I'm keeping a close eye on the rash though cos' I didn't really want my ear dropping off now, did I?!
So overall it's been a bit of a bad experience, this is mainly because I rushed the whole thing. I think you should take your time and do it over a period of weeks, but this all depends on how stretchy your skin is, how impatient your are, and that all experiences and healing times are individual.
I would like to thank Lez at Tribal Tattoo's for all of my piercings, my ears which I have explained, and both of my nipples horizontally with 1.6mm BCR's and now bars. Lez is an experienced piercer and tattooist and a damn funny guy with many amusing stories. Oh yeh and he's damn good at his job, all of my piercings were fast, professional and have healed brilliantly.
Fraz