Not long after my ears were scalpelled up to 1/2 inch it was time for me to move back home for the remainder of summer break before returning to college in the fall. I knew from the start that my parents wouldn't approve of visible modifications and I had made sure before getting it done that I would be able to completely hide my ears if I wore my hair down. Surprisingly I was able to keep employ this strategy and keep them hidden from my family for three weeks before my mom spotted them. She of course was instantly incredibly pissed; partially because I had it done and partially because I had hidden them from her. While she pretty much condones my easy to hide mods she's always been terrified that anything visible would make it impossible for me to get a job and so she has always strongly recommended I get no facial piercings. She really wanted a way to get me to remove them so after about two day of deliberating she decided that unless I took them out she wouldn't pay for the rest of my college and wouldn't allow me to live at home, she had furthermore already started looking for a plastic surgeon to sew them back up. Unwilling to quit college and move out I agreed to take them out.
At A Glance Author Uberkitty IAM Uberkitty When Three months ago Location North Carolina At this point it was three and a half weeks after the scalpelling and my ears were approximately halfway healed. When I first removed the eyelets my lobes retained the shape very well for about fifteen minutes, after which they slowly began to relax and close from the bottom up, producing slit like, but still very open and large, holes in my ear lobes. The outer edges of the fistulas were healthy and finished healing but the inner flesh was still pink and remained slightly raw; still partially open both of my ears continued to produce a large amount of lymph (little wedges of lymph formed at the corners of the slits every morning.) Given the sections of my ears that still hadn't finished healing were exposed now that the eyelets were removed my ears became sore and I was terrified that they would get infected. I did what I could to get keep my hair from getting caught up in them and I was fastidious in cleaning them in the shower. Every day I also disinfected them with diluted tea tree.
Throughout the entire process I was very depressed. I'd been coerced into losing something that meant a lot to me and had furthermore been stripped of my ability to control my own body. On the third day I was not only still crying but was getting worse. My mom was feeling sorry for me by now (she had no idea how much it meant to me) so that morning she handed the eyelets back to me and told me I could keep my ears stretched if I liked. Of course given that the jewelry had been out for so long my lobes had in fact partially closed and it was impossible to get the eyelets back in. I measured the new size of my ears in millimeters and looked for a gauge conversion chart online to find out was size jewelry I needed. I found out my previously 1/2 inch ears were now somewhere between 0 and 00 gauge. Because my ears had already undergone a lot of trauma recently I decided to downsize a little more and go to 0 instead of stretching them up to 00.
I live in a small town. There are three studios I know of within a 45 minute drive, two of which are scratchers (and as far as I know now closed down.) My dad decided to take me to the third (decent) place so that I could get some 00 gauge plugs. Unfortunately upon arriving I discovered that they only had 00 gauge plugs in acrylic, which I really did NOT want to put in my ears (again, still not healed) but I really didn't have much choice given I had no where else to get them. I picked out some single flared purple flesh tunnels and went into the back room, a little lube and they were easily in my ears. I took the o-ring but didn't put them on since I react to rubber.
I was happy to have something in my ears, even if it wasn't completely appropriate material and I always had to watch out for them since no o-rings were holding them in. I was a little worried that the plugs weren't disinfected before being put in my ears and knowing that I couldn't clean acrylic with boiling water or rubbing alcohol I once again turned to diluted tea tree oil (which as far as I know is ok to use on acrylic, though I may be wrong.) At first my ears were still sore and a little temperamental but after about a week of the tea tree oil they calmed down and continued to heal normally.
I'm happy my family let me keep my stretched ears and have since then become more honest about the modifications I have or want, which feels much better than doing things behind their backs anyway.