At A Glance
Author	RAIN
Contact	rain.emanuelsson@swipnet.se
When	Six months ago
Artist	www.bodyhole.nu
Studio	www.bodyhole.nu
Location	Borås, Sweden

Hi!

This is the story of designing an own piercing. My piercing is done horizontally through the whole of my earlobe. I have a large ballclosurering in it and I have absolutely no problems what so ever with it. It has become my special "brand", and a special part of me. The whole experience going from an idea to a sucessful new piercing, it really blows your head out.

I'm a young, middleclass girl from Sweden, interested in bodymodification. My kind of unique interest in bodymodification has met some resistance in my every-day-life, but besides from raw hatred from "normal" people I have won a great accaptance among piercers and tattooartists. For me bodymodification is selfexpression and not a group occurence. Bodymodification is very personal experince and when you really live it, you couldn't live without it.

Where I live you are considered "white-trash" for having some extra jewlery, or even "worse" tattoos. But to me bodymodification is a normal thing, and I hope there are more people who think like me out there in the world. Maybe I could reach out to these people who think like me, it's a lonely life not ever being accapted, so I though writing about my special experince here on bmezine.com would make me feel better.

If I hade written this in Swedish no one would read it, and even less would they have something to say about this special piercing I have. In Sweden it's completely unknown, according to my piercers anyway. So I guess I was curious, it is pretty cool for me to be alone, however it is also very interesting if I could contribue with sharing this rare experience with someone else.

English is my third language, and 800 words written in your third language is one-long-800-words. But now I'm done complaining about that. :)

So here the story comes. It is about how I designed and had a very special piercing done, just for me. For me, new ideas always always comes to mind, and I have to be very selective and thoughful about them. That's too bad, but I think that precaution is a big deal in making a good bodymod. It's kind of experimental, all bodies reacting differently and the way that the "medical" knowledge that is collected isn't at all categorized or easy-to-get.

At first I just got an idea out of the blue, I get them all the time so at first I didn't mind... thinking that oh no! it's not that special at all, someone else must have done it without me ever seeing pictures of it. I thought that if I - who has looked at bodymod-pictures for about ten years or so - haven't seen it, then it maybe couldn't be done. It's not that complicated, so why haven't I seen it? Right then I did what you might call pre-medschool or something like that. Studying alot, and because I live outside a small town on the country-side where it is pretty hard to find a piercer, I just thought "hey, it's an idea that I have to find something about, but maybe it's just another of my ideas that come and go." But it didn't go away, so I looked it up and found absolutely nothing about it. After this I asked around a bit and really looked into the anatomy of the earlobe, and the more I thought about it the more I came to love it.

So I called my piercing studio and asked them and they wanted to see my ear and hear me explain more before telling me if they could do it for me. I came to visit them and we discussed it a bit, and we all got excited and booked an appointment.

The big day was coming up and I felt nervous due to the great bleading risk, infections and everything. Maybe I would just fail and sit there with a bit infection instead of a great "new" piercing. But I liked the idea, so I went to the studio. At first the piercer and his apprentice looked at my ear. They tried to clamp the ear to make it an easier to pierce, but the ear bent and there was no way that it would be straight in that way. The piercer was nervous because he had to do something he never had done before. So he took the needle, the kind of needle that has a plastic tube attatched to it, and just pierced it. It slid through and didn't even hurt. It didn't even blead. And we were all impressed. So there the needle sits in my earlobe and he pulls it through leaving the plastic tube and cuts it loose. And then he exhales all his exitement and gets in-charachter playing the part of the experienced piercer.

I had thourorly explained to my piercer how I wanted the procedure done. What kind of jewlery I wanted to have during the healing process and everything was done the way I wanted. At first I wanted a straight barbell, and then when it had healed I wanted a large ring. My goal and my idea was to have the large ballclosurering that I have had half a year now. The piercers had explained that they couln't take responsibility for doing something on my request that they had never done before, however they also toled me that they were really glad to do it for me. They are clean and really good piercers, and I thought that I could take responsibility being 18 years old.

I have very small ears but we took a four sizes too long barbell to heal with in the beginning. It was four needed sizes, because the ear went all blue (and after that all the colours of the rainbow) and swollen and hurt like hell when I should sleep, but even though it didn't look good at all in the beginning, it was really fun. The earlobe has very special tissue. It is positioned over the "higher" lymphatic-system and is therefore kind of dangerous because a infection higher up is "out of reach" for the easy way and best healing-system. The earlobe is just full of bloodvessels, some people have a bit of cartilage as well, but I haven't. The bloodvessels make the body bleed to wash-out infectants. Bloodvessels also comes with a lot of nerveboundles to make you feel pain so that you don't do things that makes the body bleed too much. The amount of bloodvessels also contribue to the speed of the healingprocess. So in the end, the earlobe bleeds easily washing-out infections by dooing so, hurts a great deal and is really easy to heal because of all this.

I went home and it didn't hurt much except for when I turned around in bed, I changed in my bed to make it a clean environment, and I just dealt with it. There was a lot of icky fluid coming from the wound, but I only washed it two times a day with soap and water and it got better every day. The swelling went down, the color went back to normal (blue-green-yellow-normal). It wasn't infected in any way, it was just healing pretty well.

So after three weeks of tender care for my piercing I went back to the studio and changed the barbell for a smaller one. The size of the first barbell contribued a bit to the swelling beacause it was a bit "to large" after the first swelling-period. And then it just kept cleaning it two times a day, and the swelling bettered again. But it still was a lot of fluid coming from the wound and I went home for three more weeks.

This was the big day! Now I would see if my idea and my work with the piercing was worth anything at all. We put in a large barbell, a bit bigger in diameter than my earlobe, and there was only hope left. Noone knew if it would work at all having such a big earring in it at all times. It once again swelled up a bit and started hurting when I slept, but after a few days it normalized and it has been normal ever since. I was really proud and glad and it was an experience that I think everyone interested in bodymodification would be interested in, so now - when the ballclosurering has been stable for half a year - I though I would share it with you. It really worked out! It hasn't moved and if I want to I can have a normal lobe-earing in as well, but I'm afraid that it could ruin my horizontal all-through-the-lobe piercing, so I don't.

If you want to know anything else, just e-mail me on: rain.emanuelsson@swipnet.se

/RAIN