This is the story of my 2 gauge conches and how I got them.
At A Glance Author San Contact San@bme.anon IAM BlueStar When Five years ago Artist Lee Studio Artistic Impressions Location Niagara Falls, Canada
When I was 15 years old I was fairly modified for someone of my age. It was the year 2000 and piercings and tattoos were becoming more mainstream. Everybody and their mother had their nose and bellybuttons pierced (I don't think there is anything wrong with a bellybutton piercing or nose piercing, they were the two I started with, and they look good on almost everybody) , and piercers started doing more extreme procedures. I wanted big conches.
I had become on good terms with my piercer, Lee, and her boyfriend, Gander, at the time. She said she'd dermal punch my conches. My friend wanted to videotape it, but she wouldn't let him. I guess because it was on the borderline of being illegal. I was nervous. I had my helix pierced at 14ga earlier that day, but the power went out and Lee didn't want to dermal punch me in inadequate lighting. My friend Jacob and I went shopping for a bit and went and hung out at the shop. I picked up my 6ga barbell earlier in the day to have it autoclaved. Lee couldn't find a 6ga barbell while she was out, and I bought the last one from Way Cool Tattoos.
I was nervous. Really nervous. I had never been dermal punched before. The biggest I had been pierced at was 12ga. There was very little documentation on dermal punching at the time, and most of the people were saying it hurt a lot, bleed a lot, and healed very quickly. I liked the healing quickly part of it.
I went to the, now lit, back room for piercings. Gander was assisting Lee, since he was a piercer before he was a tattoo artist (he's also a damn good tattoo artist, I've gotten a lot of work done by him). Lee got out all the supplies. She looked a receiving tube, and then the dermal punch, and decided to use a pair of clamps on the back of my ear to press into. She also got out at 14 gauge needle to use to cut off any excesse skin, just in case.
She marked my conch, I approved it, Gander approved it, and Jacob approved it. It was time for the punch. Lee said it was going to be slow. She said she would punch all the way through into the clamps and twist as she was punching, rather than punching all the way through and then twisting at the end.
"Ok.. Big breath in.. Big breath out."
I felt this strange pain shoot through my ear. It was a dull pain and a LOT of pressure. I felt Lee twisting the punch, and I felt it break through the skin on the back of my ear. It hurt. Not as badly as I thought it would hurt, but it still hurt nonetheless. Gander cut away the excess skin and Lee popped the barbell through. She used a 5mm punch.
Blood dripped for a few minutes and then stopped. There was very little blood, even though the punch was bigger than the jewellery. I was surprised. So were Lee and Gander. I slept over at my friends house that night and bled all over her pillow. She wasn't too happy about that. I soaked it in salt water every day, twice a day, for about a month and then switched to antibacterial soap. There was blood around it every day for about a week, but never extreme amounts of bleeding.
Now, for the second one.
I had been out with my friends Holly and Jacob and Holly decided she didn't want her tongue web pierced anymore so she had Lee take the barbell out and sterilize it to use in her conch. Lee told me she had punches in to do my conch, but she'd have to taper it. I said that was cool, and went downtown to buy a barbell. I didn't notice this until later, but there was a nick in it. We walked back to Artistics in the decent weather (it was October) and Lee put the barbell in the autoclave and pierced Holly's conch.
The second punch went the same as the first, except I was much more relaxed. Lee said, "How the hell can you sit through that?!" a bunch of times, and tapered it and inserted the jewellery. I didn't even feel the taper. Then I lost my hearing in that ear. I said, "I can't hear out of this ear" and Lee told me it was because of the blood. We spent a good deal of time mopping up the blood and I could hear again and my conches matched. I was happy. Lee showed me off a bit, and some kids walked by the piercing room and flipped because there was so much blood. They made the usual, "Why did you do that?", "Didn't that hurt?" comments. My friend Drew came into the shop as we were finishing up. I got a bit of blood on my shirt, but it was a black shirt, which sucks, because blood stains look good on clothes. :)
Healing it was a bit more difficult. The nick in the jewellery would catch on my ear. So I switched barbells in my ears and eventually bought 6ga acrylic plugs for them. The acrylic plugs didn't bode well with my ears so I tapered them to 4ga and put stainless steel tunnels with o-rings in them. The stretch was easy for the left size, and slightly harder in the right side, as it was newer. I left the 4ga tunnels in for a couple of years, but the right side kept getting irritated so I downsized to 8ga and left it that way for a while.
I eventually gave in to temptation and bought new 6ga plugs. I slipped them in with no problem and started wrapping (electrical, not the best) tape around them and I could fit my 4ga plugs in them. Cool. I waited about a month and easily slid 2ga claw rings in. After a few days I switched to 2ga plugs. I have a habit of losing o-rings and the jewellery kept falling out so I bought 2 2ga straight acrylic barbells. They were slightly larger than the plugs and with a bit of lube, they were in. I've had no problems with them and my goal is 00ga. I've tried to taper to 0ga before but it won't budge, so I'm going to start wrapping the barbells with tape.
Hope you enjoyed my experience. Good luck and happy piercings to you.