I've always liked piercings but as my parents dont I only have my ears pierced, most of which I pierced myself. I have 6 piercings on my left ear and 3 on the right. My ear piercings themselves were always healed within 4-6 weeks and i'd never had any infections but I did get keloid scarring on one of the piercings which I took out, let heal over and re-pierced.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact eat_vanity@hotmail.com When It just happened Artist me Studio my house Location Bath, UK I got bored of piercing my ears and was starting to run out of room so I decided to start stretching my right lobe.
I never took much notice of the sizes as I made most of the stretching horns myself (with a little help from my sister), I used acrylic sticks and filed them down to size. The feeling of stretching my ear just that little bit bigger felt so amazing I kept going for a while. I'd never stretch it too far in fear I may start bleeding and after vomitting from getting an earring stuck in my ear it was probably a good idea that I didnt take it too far.
After about 6 months all three piercings on my right ear were about 5mm each. I'd had no trouble with the stretching as I have fairly elasticy ears and I did everything very slowly.
I started buying ACTUAL jewelery from a little hippy shop called Eureka.
I took my second piercing up to 6ml, and decided to leave it at that and just stretch the first piercing so it would look graduated.
I found a pretty purple flesh tunnel to go through my first hole but after buying it I found it was too big and had to stretch my ear further.
I gave up on the stretchings for a couple of months and decided to start it up again after seeing my best mate's boyfriend's ear which was about 10mm big.
So I went back to Eureka and buy a 8mm spike and her boyf helps me push it through. Hurt like hell as it was going through but i was going up 3mm in one go. After it was in it help fine after about an hour or so and I forgot about it but was damn proud of, what her boyfriend called, my work of art!
I woke up one morning (about 2 days after) and my lobe had swelled to at least twice its normal size. I stupidly didnt take the jewellery out but instead, cleaned it thouroughly and hoped it would clear itself up.
Another day passed and it had swelled even bigger so I decided to take the 5mm spike out which was directly next to the 8mm one. I was hoping this would give my ear more space to heal etc.
By the end of the day it hurt so much I finally took the 8mm spike out too. It took me ages to get it out because my ear had swelled so tightly around it and it was so painful.
After taking the spike out i took a look in the mirror and blood and pus was dripping everywhere. I took the other piercing out in hope it would all calm down.
So here I am with a big piercingless, swollen, UGLY ear! I've soaked it in disinfectant and wiped away as much pus as I can and squeezed my ear a little to try and get some more of the gooey stuff out.
I found some fucibet cream (I strongly reccomend using this but you will need a prescription to get hold of it) which my sister was prescribed when her tragus piercing got infected so i've been using that to help the swelling go down and to fight any evil infection bugs that might be lurking in there.
I'm going to keep using the fucibet for a couple more days and clean it in a salt bath regularly. If it's not better after that then i'm heading to the doctors to get told off and probably get a lecture from him about piercing (which I DO deserve).
At least thats my stretching phase over, just like my hair dying phase after it went fluorescent orange... but thats a story for another website.
So there are a couple of things i'm going to remember here.
1) If stretching piercings get it done professionally or do it VERY slowly yourself and dont get jealous of people with bigger ear holes than you!
2) If it gets swollen take it out straight away!
3) Listen to mum when she says, " Eeew thats gonna go nasty" , "That'll get infected, I can tell" and " If you stretch that much bigger it will look disgusting"!
Listen to you mothers people. They really do know everything!
Seriously though; don't stretch things too quickly unless you can handle a swollen, infected, painful ear!
If you have any questions or feel the need to tell me how stupid I am email me at eat_vanity@hotmail.com.
Happy stretching campers!
R... x