Two years ago or so, I got both of my lobes pierced with 12 gauge needles. About a year afterwards, I noticed a lump on the back of my left ear. I didn't think much of it—it never got any bigger, or bothered me in any kind of way. Maybe a few months after I noticed the lump, I found out that whenever I rotated the ring in the hole, a horrible smell emanated from the piercing. Thinking to myself, "What the hell?" I took both of the rings out of my ears (though I'm not sure why I thought that would fix anything). Lo and behold, the holes closed up, and I was left feeling pretty damn incomplete.
At A Glance Author Lacy Contact Lacy@bme.anon When Three months ago Artist Dominick Studio Starlight Tattoo and Piercing Location Belville, NJ I still had this pesky lump on the back of my earlobe, though. After a few injections of steroids (since it appeared to be a keloid) which didn't have much of an affect on anything, I wanted to get my ears repierced, but was unsure if that would make the keloid angrier and bigger. A few months ago, I went to get a tattoo done on my back. I had a conversation with the piercer at Starlight, Dominick, and he brought up the process of dermal punching. He said since a dermal punch is more like a cookie cutter, it would remove some of the scar tissue ("And keloid!" I thought to myself) and heal faster than a piercing with a needle. I decided that I should probably sleep on that information, and decide if I wanted to risk some more keloiding.
However, after my tattoo was completed, I set up an appointment with Dom to come back the next week and get my lobes punched. The next week, when I arrived, we went into the back room, and he set me up with some 10 gauge circulars. After he cleaned my lobes off, he got the first punch, and asked me if I was ready.
My left ear was first. He pushed the dermal punch through, and the first thing I noticed was, though it definitely hurt, it was less painful than when I had my ears done with a needle. There was some slight bleeding, but nothing a little pressure couldn't fix. Dom slid the ring in, popped in the bead, and that was that. After a short breather, my right ear was next. This time, though, after the punch went through, my ear bled like a stuck pig. I could feel it running down off of my lobe. After he put the jewelry in, Dom got me to tilt my head, and had one of my friends push on a pressure point on the side of my ear to cut the bleeding off. After a few minutes the bleeding stopped. Dom showed me the insides of the dermal punches, which contained pieces of my ear, of course. He told me that some folks liked to eat what had been punched out, but I declined.
After we left Starlight, for the next couple of hours I had to be careful not to knock my ears, or they would start bleeding again. Not profusely—just enough to make me want to go run and get a Q-tip to dab up the leaking blood. Other than that, everything was fine—just really sore. That night I slept with my head on a towel so as not to smear any blood on anything.
After a week or so, I was able to sleep fully on my ears with no pain from my new piercings. Which is amazing to me, considering that a week after I had my lobes pierced with needles, I was still in no shape to be sleeping on either one of them. The healing process just goes a hell of a lot faster with dermal punching. Also, my keloid disappeared! There was a slight scare when I thought that another one had developed, but it just turned out to be a boil or something. I have no idea how that happened. However, it popped one night while I was sleeping on it, so the next day I woke up, squeezed as much blood and pus out of it as I could, and put some bacatracin on the wound. I did that whenever I thought about it for the next couple of days, and everything healed up perfectly. This is three months later, and I haven't had any problems other than that whatsoever.
Dermal punching is definitely the way to go! Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm sorry I didn't get them punched with an 8 gauge. Its way easier to just go big with the gauge and get your lobes punched, rather than take all that time to stretch them out. So, I had a really positive experience, and would recommend dermal punching to anyone who is considering it.