At A Glance
Author	angee
Contact	angee@bme.anon
When	N/A
Artist	Both myself and Jason
Studio	Divine
Location	Saskatoon, Sk

I first became entranced by the idea of larger than "normal" lobe piercings late in my 16th year; I had very little experience with modification at that point, just a few self-poked ear holes and eyebrow piercings that I had lost due to ignorance and inexperience earlier in the year. Eventually I would get more mods, first a lip piercing, then another one, which led to having my septum pierced and stretched professionally (more than once, due to unfortunate circumstances) by Jason at Divine in Saskatoon, who is both an extremely talented body modification artist and amazing friend.

Eventually, after a few weeks of late night gazing at the pictures of dermal punched tissue on BME, I decided that I wanted to experiment, to try this with the flesh on my lobes. Not to try to skip the important step of stretching slowly, but instead to give myself a better starting point and trying something new, which I'm always up for.

I managed to obtain an autoclaved and sterilized six gauge dermal punch from a doctor's office, and I thought that I was set. That night, I set myself up a tiny personal studio in the bathroom, with brand new latex gloves, gauze, rubbing alcohol and iodine. The punches themselves went perfectly, and I was left with beautiful six gauge holes to carefully take care of the next month or so.

I cleaned them religiously, with nightly saline soaks and warm epsom salt baths a few times a week. Soon enough, I had healed lobe piercings that I showed off proudly to friends, proclaiming joyfully that I had done them myself and it didn't hurt that badly! Eventually one of those six gauge holes became a two gauge hole, and I was as excited about the process of stretching as I was about just having the holes themselves.

Unfortunately, within the next month, my best friend and I were involved in a terrible car accident that required a lengthy hospital stay for me, and all my piercings were taken out without my consent in the emergency room. Soon enough, the holes closed and I was without mods once again.

While my body healed, I thought of the possibility of dermal punching my lobes again, this time having my friend and piercer Jason perform the procedure, and even having them done at a zero gauge. Eventually, after getting my lip re-pierced (which honestly, only made the want for lovely lobes again worse), I discussed it with Jason, and he agreed to do it. I ordered the punches from bmeshop, bought stainless steel tunnels for jewelry, and made an appointment.

Eventually the day arrived, and with my dermal punches and best friends in tow, we went down to the shop to talk with Jason and get the piercings done. Andy, who had come along and also had an appointment to have her ears scalpelled went first, and I hopped nervously from foot to foot waiting for my turned. We all giggled about being able to actually hear the sounds of Andy's ears being cut from a few feet away, and then she was done and it was my turn.

Jason had never dermal punched non-cartilage flesh before, so I think we were both nervous as we prepared physically and mentally for the procedure. Soon enough, the punches were up against my lobes, and as I breathed out the punches glided through flesh and it was done. It bled a bit, understandably, and we all talked and took pictures before tipping Jason and leaving the studio. They began to heal normally, and after close to four weeks of soaks and treating the ears like babies, I had healed piercings again and I was thrilled. Jason had done a beautiful job.

Two weeks later, I began to notice a bit of redness and soreness around the flesh tunnels, which I initially wrote off as irritation and went back to the epsom and saline soaks. Eventually the redness turned into swelling, and that became keloid scar tissue. Lots of it. At first Jason and I were startled, as neither of us had even had the chance to see anything like it. It seemed to only develop on the front of the lobes, and far more intensely on the right side.

In early spring of this year, I got my hands on scalpels and cut nearly half of the tissue on the right side off. I was planning on taking it all off, but the lack of anesthesia and too much blood to clearly see what I was doing kept me from finishing. Once it healed it looked better, though there was still a large lump of tissue closer to the bottom of the lobe. I'm still considering all my removal options, as there are quite a few possible ones to think about. I'm planning to get them professionally pierced and stretch slowly after all the tissue has been removed. I learned my lesson about dermal punching soft tissue. And I'm got huge lobes that are begging for pretty wooden tunnels.

I wouldn't ever recommend dermal punching soft tissue to anyone, but in the end, I would say that the whole ordeal turned out on the positive side for me, even with the unfortunate results. I learned a lot about my body and how it prefers to be treated. And even though it was short lived, the joy that those silly little zero gauge holes provided were more than I dreamed.