Last October, maybe a week before Halloween, my best friend decided that she wanted to get a monroe. Being the more modded of my group of friends at the time, I volunteered to be the 'immoral support', if you will, and go with her to the shop to get it done. I almost insisted that she go to the shop where I'd gotten all of my piercings because I trusted them more than any other shop in the area.
At A Glance Author miss_heather Contact miss_heather@bme.anon IAM miss_heather When A year ago Artist Jen Studio Ancient Arts Location Charleston, WV We get to the shop and my friend is filling out her paperwork, etc. and I get to talking to the shop girl. She and I were discussing our piercings, of course, and we happened upon the subject of conches. Now, for a couple of years, I'd been considering getting my inner conch done. After seeing another friend get his done, I figured it can't hurt that much and I liked the way it looked. At that point, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and get it done.
So, my friend gets her monroe done and is standing around with a slowly swelling lip and I'm getting things straightened out with Jen. She starts looking through her equipment and just gets this odd look on her face. It seemed as if they had no 12ga needles in stock. At first, this seemed a little weird to me, because I'd assumed she would do it at a 14ga. She then proceeded to explain that for cartilage piercings, she preferred to pierce one gauge larger than the jewelry she intended to put in, in order to help keep the piercing from keloiding or forming any hypertrophic scarring. This made sense to me.
At that point, she asked me if I still wanted to do it, but with a 10ga needle. I thought sure, why not. Can't hurt any more than a 12ga. Was I ever wrong!
So, I fill out my paperwork and go back to the piercing room and plonk myself down on the table thing. My friend is still following me around with her swollen lip, looking at me like I'm completely insane for having a needle *that* large shoved through what basically amounts to unhardened bone and I'm starting to get rather nervous.
So, Jen cleans my right ear and marks me, using the little flashlight and all to make sure she's not hitting any prominent blood vessels. Then she does something I didn't really expect. She put clamps on my ear! That felt beyond weird. I didn't really see how she'd be able to get them on there, but she did.
By now, I've realized that the clamps are usually the most painful part of the procedure, so I'm thinking this piercing is gonna be cake... Wrong. She does the standard three breaths and on the exhale of the third, the needle goes through.
That was the strangest thing I think I've ever felt. There was a very loud pop as the needle went through the cartilage, a searing pain that I really can't describe, cold sweat, and a wave of nausea like I've never felt. I ended up sitting on the table with my head between my knees and my hand on the trashcan, because I honestly thought I was going to vomit and/or pass out. It was NOT a pleasant experience.
So, I'm sitting there, dizzy and sweaty, with a needle hanging out of my ear. Jen keeps a little fan in the piercing room, so she turned that on and pointed it at me. After about 10 minutes, I feel a good deal better, so I tell her to go ahead and put the jewelry in.
Bad idea. As soon as she transfers from needle to CBR, I get hit with that wave of nausea and the cold sweat again. I wouldn't even let her touch the ring to put the bead in yet. I sat there for another good 10 minutes, trying not to pass out. Finally, I tell her to just close the CBR and let me go sit on the couch in the lobby. She does so and I go sit on the cushy couches in the lobby and try to regain my composure. After about 15 minutes, I'm ok and my friend and I leave.
I followed all the aftercare instructions I was given, from cleaning it with uncolored, unscented antibacterial soap to sea salt soaks, clean pillowcases, the works. Unfortunately, it did NOT want to heal properly. It was constantly crusty and very painful. I wasn't infected, however. There was no pus, no heat. Just redness and PAIN. On more than one occasion, I considered just retiring it. At times it was bad enough that my hair touching my ear made me flinch in pain.
But three months later, I went to get my septum pierced as a Christmas present to myself, and I remembered to ask Jen to look at my conch because of all the problems I was having. She looked at it and said that it was actually healing very well but if it was bothering me that much, we could try putting a barbell in it instead of a CBR and see that made any difference. So, I got my septum done and she changed the CBR in my conch to a straight 12ga barbell and told me to come back if it still bothered me in a couple of weeks.
Well, after changing to the barbell, the soreness and weepiness went away almost immediately. As best I can tell, the stress of the CBR getting pulled in my sleep was just causing a lot of irritation. However, after having the barbell in for a couple of months, it started getting very sore again and it occurred to me that the barbell might be too long. So, I went and bought a 1/2in 12ga barbell to put in it, which did indeed resolve that issue.
Honestly, I have to say that for all that this piercing has pissed me off, I'm glad I got these issues resolved, because I *do* really like it.
Now, I'm thinking about trying a 1/4in labret stud to see if I can't resolve the last little bit of stress on my poor ear!