I was home in Pennsylvania, on break from the college where I go to school in DC. I decided that I wanted to get my ears pierced again, and that I might as well do it while I was home, where it might be cheaper than in the city. I've already got six piercings in my left ear and four in my right, scattered between the lobe and the cartilage, but these were all done with your basic piercing gun. I'd never had a piercing done any other way. Well, this time, I decided that I wanted to do something a little bit different, and in the end chose a rook. I checked out the web sites of several of the local tattoo/body piercing places, and talked to some friends before choosing Naughty Vibrations.
At A Glance Author Rosie When A week ago I went in and told them that I wanted to have a rook in both ears, whereupon I was taken into the back of the shop which was very clean. All of the equipment had been sterilized and both of the piercer's came back (I guess it was a slow night) and put on gloves. Only one of them did the actual piercing though, the other just helped and talked to me. The rings were chosen, my ears were marked up, and the piercing commenced.
They started on the right ear and while it was more painful than I had anticipated, it could have been worse. As I was soon to find out.
Remember too, that I had only ever experienced a piercing gun, which is a quick shot through a thinner section of cartilage with a much smaller piece of metal being rammed through the ear. I almost decided to call it quits after the first, but decided to keep going. I should have listened to my instincts.
At any rate, the piercer had me stand up and rechecked the markings on my left ear to make sure that it would be even with the right, then had me sit back down. Once again the needle went through, followed by the ring. At least, he tried to follow it through with the ring. It wouldn't go through. So he explained to me that the ring hadn't gone through and he was going to try putting the needle through again, but it shouldn't hurt because the needle would just be following the same path.
Wrong.
It hurt twice as much, and I was now seriously reconsidering my decision to go on with it. Still, the ring wouldn't go through. He asked if I wanted him to keep trying. Now, my dad always jokes about my high tolerance to pain, and I've got a ridiculous amount of pride, so I just grimaced and said "Third time's the charm, right?"
Guess what?
Wrong again.
Now, I probably should have clued in to the fact that anything this ridiculously painful probably meant there was something wrong and I should have backed out. I mean, the piercer looked like a pretty big guy and he was trying his best to get this little ring through my ear and it just wasn't working. Also, the guy who was helping kept having to swab out my ear because the piercer couldn't see due to all of the blood. Now, I always thought that the ear was one of those places without a particularly high number of blood vessels.
Oh well, I never said I was particularly bright, just stubborn. In the end, I let him take one more crack at it and he finally got the ring to go through. By this time, my left ear is bright red, swollen, throbbing, and still somewhat bloody. Not surprisingly, they just took a picture of the rook in the right ear to display on the site.
Anyhow, I paid, went home, and took care of my ear, cleaning it carefully and following the post-piercing instructions to the letter. Within the next few days though, it became clear that the left ear was infected. The swelling had decreased somewhat from the first night, though. Enough for me to see that in fact, while there was only one hole on the upper side of the cartilage where the ring went through, the underside showed the skin had been pierced in more than one place, which probably explained why the tries after the first hurt so much. He was piercing through a new spot right on top of the old one. In addition, it was crooked, a fact that the swelling had disguised. While my right rook was not far off from vertical, the left was at about a forty-five degree angle.
In the end, I pulled the ring out of my left ear (which was an ordeal in itself: about an hour in the bathroom and a good bit more blood.) As of right now, about a week and a half later, my right rook is doing well, hardly even sore at all, and my left ear is still healing up.
In the future I think I'll probably end up getting my left ear re-done. Just not at that place.
The moral of the story is that, while yes, piercing is going to be at least a little painful, if you start to get a feeling that something is really wrong, then stop. You just might save yourself a head-ache or four.