I had my lobes pierced when I was ten, and was pretty happy, but for the last 3 years I've been getting into piercing more since I did my work experience in a place that had a piercing studio and talking to the piercer really interested me.
At A Glance Author Requiemfortheworld Contact hairdyeinhell@hotmail.com IAM requiemfortheworld When N/A Artist Me and Benn Hall Studio Jewellery Junkies at Designworks Location Barnstaple, Devon When I did my work experience in a piercing studio, my mom said to me not to get any more piercings done, this fuelled my need for piercings and, without her knowing
I had both my nipples done. Piercing is pretty addictive so I thought that I'd start stretching my ear up, I didn't really know how to do it, but I figured that as I'd had my ears pierced for a pretty long time and they'd healed, it would be pretty hard to break through the scar tissue, so I used hoop earrings, putting the thin bit in, then the thicker bit then adding more, I had about 6 earrings in and I thought I'd better get a bigger ring, So I bout a 2.5mm ring and it went in, then up to a 4mm ring.
I thought about tunnels then, so I went to see my piercer Benn, and I borrowed his 5mm tunnel, I took it home and wondered what I was going to get it in with, then I found a really good circular acrylic chopstick, so I sterilised the chopstick and the tunnel and cleaned everything up. Then I put Vaseline on the chopstick and my ear and started stretching, I figured the back of my ear would be tighter, so pushing the tunnel in forwards might not work or be a lot of hard work, so I put the chopstick through the back of my ear first, it was pretty tight and it was pretty painful and it bled quite a bit but when I'd got the chopstick as far through my ear as possible, I put the tunnel onto the chopstick and started taking it out of my ear so the tunnel was sliding into the hole, it popped in pretty easily but was quite sore and painful for a while.
I left my 5mm in for a couple of weeks (bad idea) and it wasn't hurting at all, so I went and bout a 6.5mm tunnel. I thought that jumping 1.5mm myself would be more hassle than it's worth, so I went to Benn. He got some insertion pins and started pushing them through. I now know that I have really unstretchy ear lobes (dammit) and he was pushing and pushing and it just wasn't happening, so we both made the decision to split my lobe to get the tunnel in. This is the most immense pain I've ever felt, and I've done some pretty mean stuff. There were 6 splits and quite a lot of blood, but we got it in. This time, waiting 2 weeks was a good idea, as it gave the splits time to heal but not fully so there was not scar tissue to break.
I went up to 7mm really easily, and then 8mm, I managed to get hold of a 9mm plug so I didn't have to do 2mm jumps and that came and went, as did the 10mm, and the 11mm. When I got to 12mm however, my ear did the ear equivalent of 'Ha! Never!' and had started to get sore, over 2 or 3 days, it was so sore it couldn't be touched and it went a puffy, then over the next couple of days, it went purple and started to envelop the plug. Not good. Plus, the gland just below my ear (on my neck believe it or not) had got pretty big and was all sticky outty. So, I removed the CLEAR (remember that) plug and you couldn't see what colour it was, let alone see through it. It was covered in a mixture of lymph, pus and blood, and interesting colour combination or clear goo, yellow goo, green goo and red. Which wasn't at all pleasant. In addition to this, it stunk. So, I downsized back to 11mm and cleaned and cleaned until nothing else was oozing out of my ear. I bought some more Carex (anti bacterial soap stuff) and some micro-porous tape, and every time I went to bed I cleaned it and taped it up to stop my hair etc getting in it and to stop it falling out and going all oozy again, I did this every night for a week, along with cleaning it twice more every day, eventually, the oozing of unpleasant liquid stopped and it was just small amounts of blood and lymph. Now the inside and back of my ear was bearable to touch and visible, I could see I not only had had an infection but a massive blow out. I was not happy. So, 3 weeks on and with a lot of massaging cream and olive oil, the blow out is slowly disappearing and the ear in general is loosening up and I reckon in a week I will be able to take it back up to 12mm. My aim is to be 15mm, I'll get there....slowly. My problem is that the skin in my ears (and generally the rest of it too) is really unstretchy, but, on the plus side has a really quick recovery time, I heal from nipple piercings in a month and stretches in roughly a week.
I currently (at the time of tying this) have two stretched ears (11mm and 8mm), two horizontal and one vertical nipple piercings and an 18gauge smiley, but lack of money is hindering everything, which is a pain, but waiting the time to get the money wins hands down over getting a bodged piercing for half price.
My method of stretching worked for me, and as long as everything is sterilised, you should be fine. But for the bigger work, a piercer (and a good one at that) is a good idea as it's pretty hard to get the courage and adrenaline rush to split your own ear. Explaining to some people why knowing and trusting your piercer, and, as often as you can, use the same one for other piercing and checkups can be difficult, but I think people who cared and respected their bodies and their image would understand.
A bad piercing can usually be fixed but a bad piercer can't be. If you are in the South West of England and in Devon, come to Barnstaple and go and see Benn Hall in Designworks, he's amazing.