First things first, I already wrote the story of getting my tragus pierced (My Pretty Little Tragus). I think at the time I wrote it, I hadn't had any problems, but then I had only had it done a short time. So here's what's new with my tragus. Please note, I don't recommend doing a lot of the things I did (not cleaning as much as I was told to), so don't do it!
At A Glance Author Ashley Contact Ashley@bme.anon IAM kittiegurl03 When A week ago Artist T.C. Studio Tom Cat's Tattoo and Body Piercing Location Aberdeen, WA, USA About 2 to 3 weeks after the piercing, I noticed a small red dot not even 1 cm above the site of the piercing. As time progressed, the little dot changed to a small bump. Then it got bigger and bigger. Then it turned red, then purple. Every once in a while, it would drain a little bit of lymph, but barely any.
The first thing I did (that was actually a good idea) was I went to the piercer. He told me that it was most likely a keloid and to just keep cleaning and it would go away. So I kept up my cleaning and it would get smaller for a while, the get big again. I eventually cleaned it so much that the antibacterial soap I was told to use, was drying out the whole area. So I stopped cleaning it as much.
All in all, I made about 4 different trips to the piercer and he just kept telling me it was a keloid. Then one night, I was playing with my hair and accidentally hit the bump with my fingernail. As soon as I did, a whole bunch of white pus came out. That's when I realized that this may be a drainage problem, or maybe even something to do with the fact that the cbr got bumped around a lot.
So about a week ago, I went back in to get the cbr changed to a straight barbell. I figured it would be a pretty easy and painless procedure as the piercing barely hurt at all. Boy was I wrong!!! First of all, they didn't have any 18 ga straight barbells. I decided I would just wait a couple weeks until they could get an order in. Then T.C. was looking through the display case and found a 16 ga straight barbell. He asked me if I would rather stretch it. I asked how much it would hurt and he said it wouldn't be much worse than stretching my lobes was. So I figured I would go ahead with it.
So he told Tommy (his apprentice) to go in the back room and get everything set up for a stretch. Tommy had never done a stretch before, so he didn't feel comfortable doing it. So T.C. finished lining up a guy's tattoo stencils and took me in the back. I wasn't worried at all, since my lobes didn't hurt much to stretch. Wrong again.
The first problem was that the bumps on the inside of my ear were pretty large which made getting the cbr out extremely hard and painful. I think this is when I started bleeding. My tragus was pulled around a lot during that. The actual tapering was the least painful thing out of the whole process. So he got the taper through and then the barbell. Then the phone rang and it was the president of a motorcycle club that he belongs to. So he took the call and was on the phone for 5-10 minutes. The whole time, I'm sitting there with the barbell in my tragus waiting for the ball to be put on. Tommy and the counter girl, Sammi, kept coming to the door to make sure I was ok.
So T.C. finally gets off the phone and comes back in. We're both prepared for the putting on of the ball to be a long, tedious process as it was going on the inside end of the barbell. Luckily for both of us, he got it on the first try. Then he picked up everything, and had me go out to the lobby and pay. He was going to charge me $10 plus tax, but since I'm always at his shop and always telling people to go there, he only made me pay $10. So I paid my money and left.
He hadn't cleaned the blood off my ear and I didn't want to touch it, so I walked the 2½ blocks back to my car with people staring at my ear. I must have looked pretty hardcore :). So when I got home, I cleaned the blood up with some hot water.
I haven't had any problems since then. My ear was quite tender for about 5 days, but that's to be expected as the tragus is a rather thick piece of cartilage. Other than that, I haven't had any problems with it and the bumps are almost completely gone.