If anybody has ever told you that piercings are not addictive... they lie. It all started with a standard lobe (one on each ear) and an industrial, now about a year and a half later my collection of piercings have grown to...
At A Glance Author NiX Contact NiX@bme.anon When Three months ago 6ga. stretched lobes
14ga. industrial (on right)
16ga. cartilage (at the top, one on each ear)
12ga. conches (one on each ear)
16ga. standard navel
14ga. surface bars (3 around navel, now retired)
14ga. nape
and of course the piercing that this experience is about... my orbital.
So it was about 3 months ago... about mid-November and I had developed an itch for a new adornment! I started looking around for some ideas, I had wanted a daith done on the left side for quite some time but now, in my opinion was not a good time for it. So after coming to this site for possible ideas I had decided on an industrial that crossed over top of my existing industrial making an "X" shape at the top of my ear. Or an orbital that passed around my industrial. So I called my piercer and made the appointment, leaving my decision until then.
That weekend when I went in for my appointment after much measuring, examining and more measuring, I realized that it was a good thing that I had not set my heart on the criss-crossing industrial because there was no way it could be done (there was just not enough room). So since it was decided for me which piercing we were going to do, we got started.
We decided to use my existing cartilage for one of the orbitals holes and my piercer would be piercing an outer conch, about 1cm away from the cartilage piercing, diagonally. That way when the orbitals ring was in, it would circle around my industrial bar! My piercer began ripping the instruments she would be using from their autoclaved packages. So after marking the placement (and changing gloves) I was asked to lie back on the table/chair and tilt my head away from my piercer.
Now normally at this point I would be quite nervous but I knew that this piercing would only be a quick pinch and it would be over. So my piercer lined the needle up to the hole and had me start breathing deep, breathe in... and out, in... and out, in... and intense pressure followed by a quick flare of pain. The ring was quickly slipped into the fresh hole.
Now came the tricky part, my piercer had to somehow get the ring through the other hole to form my orbital. After twisting this way and that, it was just not working. My ear was now quite a bloody mess as you can imagine. Turns out my ear is irregularly thick at the top. This meant that my piercer had to bend the ring larger than normally to get it to go through both holes but once the ring was through both holes there was not enough of the ring sticking out of the holes for the clamps to grab and close the ring around the ball. So after much more messing around and pulling and stretching, we thought, what if we tried to use a slightly larger ring. Out comes the autoclaved package with another ring, the ring that was currently in was removed which hurt like hell. The new ring was being slide into the fresh hole and exactly like the other one, once through both holes there was not enough of the ring sticking out for the clamps to grab and close it. At this point my piercer decided that my poor ear, which was ready to crumple up and die, had had enough torture for one evening and said that she would custom order me a ring. So the ring that was in was removed and I had yet another ring (this one was horseshoe shaped) slid into my fresh hole. I was told to baby it and come back in a couple of weeks for a second try.
This hole was just not very nice, it had a very large lump on it the majority of the time, which bled when I squished it while cleaning. It was always red and angry feeling. Finally though it seemed that I had made some progress using Satin and salt soaks, it was not sore anymore (most of the time) but it still had a keloid on it (which had also decreased in size)! So I decided to go back and see what my piercer had to say. Part of the keloid problem was caused from the horseshoe shaped ring that was currently in it, so we switched that (which was much easier than the other times) to just a normal captive bead ring (although it looked kind of silly because the ring had to be so big to fit all the way around my ear, at least it was much more comfortable)!
So at this time I was told to continue the Satin and soaks also that in 6 weeks time I could go back in and have my proper ring installed. So I continued my cleaning regimen for about 2 and a half months just to make sure it was healed before changing the ring again. Finally it was time. I had successfully beaten the keloid on my ear and my ear was looking pretty good.
Two nights later I went in to see my piercer, she said that my ear looked very good and that we could try putting in my new captive bead ring. So that is what we did, this ring slide in and was closed very quickly and easily (just a little bit of twisting and pulling). My ear looked much better now that the two rings had been eliminated and replaced with one ring. I went home that night very happy.
For the first couple of days following the insertion of the new ring my ear was slightly red, it was fully healed, but the redness quickly vanished after a couple hot salt soaks and Satin cleaning.
So I guess even though at first this piercing did not look like it was in for the long haul, turns out it was, and it is also one of my favorite piercings (my first favorite being my nape)! I guess this piercing kind of taught me a lesson. That even though it was not one of those piercings that went perfectly smooth and was healed in a month, it still turned out to be great, it just took a little extra love and attention. Believe me I considered taking this piercing out twice, but I'm definitely glad I kept it!
Happy Piercing!