My first set of earlobe piercings were done when I was 11 years old, with a piercing gun. At that time I was very happy only to have a piercing – I did not care much for the placement or the "piercer"s hygiene. After a couple of years I realized that the placement was not optimal, the piercings were placed too close to my head, leaving a lot of unpierced flesh. I got my 2nd set of piercings to fill up my lobes and was happy about them. Some years later I pierced them for the third time, this time I did it by myself. This is not a good idea, I know, but luckily I was wise enough to use proper equipment such as 1, 2 mm (16 ga) sterile needles and sterile CBRs at the same size, which I autoclaved at my father's dentist office.
At A Glance Author kliburger When A week ago Artist Tobben Studio House of Pain Location Oslo, Norway After one more year I took a close look at my ears. Was I really happy with how it looked? I was basically left with 3 sets of lobe piercings together with my other cartilage piercings (inner conch, helix and tragus). It hit me as a bit messy. There was no system, my ears was total anarchy. I had toyed with the idea of stretching my lobes for a while, but since none of my lobe piercings had an adequate placement, I did not plan for anything.
After doing a bit of research on surface piercings on BME, I had received a lot of information regarding dermal punching, used in the surface punch-and-taper method. Punching a larger hole in my earlobes seemed to be a good idea – I would not have to stretch all the way from 1, 2 mm to, let's say, 8 mm, and I would get rid of my old holes.
My father was travelling to Oslo for a weekend in February, and I went with him to have Tobben, my piercer, check out my nape piercing, which was done in November 2004. Still, I did not want to travel the 30 miles without getting any work done, so I was debating the options. The week before the trip to Oslo I had mainly decided to go for something in my ears, maybe a conch or a tragus to create more symmetry.
When I walked up the stairs to House of Pain around 12 pm, I began to feel very nervous. I ate a good breakfast one hour earlier, so I figured it could not have anything to do with my blood sugar. I decided that the anxiety was a result of a night with little to no sleep. I said hello to Tobben and followed him into the piercing room for him to take a look at my nape. I had been praying for it not to start rejecting, and lucky me, it had not. However, one of the balls was on the edge of falling off, so Tobben screwed it back on. He asked me if I was going to get some more piercings, and I said yes. I had sent him an email about it some weeks earlier, but apparently he had forgotten it. We discussed what we could do with my ears, and I mentioned the lobe punching idea to him. He said scalpelling was a better option, and explained me that if I decided to go through with it, he would cut between my lower lobe piercings. He showed me a 10 mm plug and let me think about it for some minutes while he talked to some friends in the waiting room. I took a close look on my lobes in the mirror. They are large and fleshy and were begging to be stretched. I had actually pretty much settled on scalpelling them already, but I just wanted to be sure that I really wanted to do this. Tobben got back and I said that I had decided to go with the scalpelling, and he explained a bit more about the procedure while he set up the equipment. He said he would taper one of my piercings in each lobe to 2, 4 mm to create enough room for the scalpel inside the piercing. Then he would cut from the hole closest to my head to the 2nd set of piercings, if that makes any sense. Then he'd taper them up to 10 mm and insert the plugs. It sounded fine to me, so I told him to start right away. He started cleaning my ears with Technicare, and I focused on a painting of a man in a superman suspension, which is hanging between the windows in the piercing room. It is one of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen.
Suddenly, I got this weird feeling that Tobben cleaned my left ear only with rubbing alcohol when he used Technicare on the other one. I found this to be a bit strange, so I confronted him about it. He said that I was wrong; he used Technicare on the left ear before he cleaned it with alcohol. I was a bit embarrassed; I felt rude because I questioned his methods, since I know that his hygiene is excellent. He assured me that it was ok, and I felt like I was going insane. He drew purple lines on my lobes with a toothpick, and the placement was excellent given that I was so asymmetrical. I gave him the okay-face and laid down on the bench while he covered most of my face in paper. Suddenly I felt a need to cry, and tears rolled down my cheeks. I could see the "What's wrong?"-expression in his face, and I explained that it really was nothing, but I knew that he would not accept a simple explanation like that, so I told him that this scalpelling meant a lot to me, since I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, and that this procedure was a part of my mental recovering. This was actually not very far from the truth, but I did not cry because of that. I had no idea, but I figured later that it probably had something to do with my sleeping too little that night. Anyways, I dried away my tears and told him to go on. We started with my left ear, and he tapered one of the holes, and it was stinging a lot. I could not feel the insertion of the scalpel, but I surely felt the cutting. Tapering the piercing created some form of pressure, and when he started cutting the pressure was released and I was left with a wonderful burning pain. The bigger taper was inserted, and the cold steel was greatly appreciated. I could not feel the jewellery insertion that much, but I remember that I thought it took a hell of a lot of time.
The procedure was much the same on the other ear, but it was over quicker and bled a lot more. My right ear turned out to be my problem ear, apparently, both during the procedure and the aftercare.
After he was finished, Tobben cleaned me up and explained me the aftercare. After 11 piercings I know more or less exactly what to do, so we did not give it that much time. He showed me different types of plugs and flesh tunnels in a catalogue from barbarella.se, and I was overwhelmed by all the options larger lobes gave me. I paid him 1000 NOK (about 110 US dollars) and tipped 10 %. He told me that he usually does not get tipped, and that I should not. I do not think it is common to tip piercers in Norway, but since we tip waiters for carrying our food around, we should give a little extra to people who poke us and make sure we don't die afterwards. And Tobben is an incredible piercer as well.
I was not supposed to meet my folks for 3 hours after getting pierced, so I decided to take a look around in Oslo and maybe buy some new clothing. When we talked about aftercare Tobben told me that it would probably start bleeding occasionally the next couple of days, so I picked up some Kleenex at the pharmacy in case my ears would freak out far from any public toilets. It did not bleed that much though, only a tiny bit. The major bleeding started later that evening, when I was back in my hotel room. I tried to do a sea salt soak to loosen up the dried blood around my plugs, and the solution turned deep red in a matter of seconds. I clean my lobes, and after ten minutes the blood stilled had not stopped running. I figured I would just let it dry up and leave it that way until the next morning.
I woke up Sunday morning with blood in my hair and on my pillow, so I took a shower and cleaned away the mess. Suddenly the piercings started bleeding like there was no tomorrow, and the blood would not coagulate at all. We were supposed to visit my grandmother that day, and she is 80 years old and terrified of blood. I figured that the blood had to dry up sometime, so I would just wear my hair down to cover it. I did not even attempt to clean the sheets and the pillowcase – whatever I did it would still look like someone committed homicide in that room.
I walked around in several museums and parks that day. It was very cold outside, and since I did not bring a hat with me I managed to get some frostbite on the tip of my lobes. I was not that bad though, and it disappeared after a few days. After that the day was pretty much uneventful until we got to the airport late that night. I was sitting on the floor at our gate waiting for our boarding (the plane was delayed, off course) when I felt something dripping down at my collarbone. I ran into a bathroom nearby to clean off the blood. A lady who was washing her hands looked at me like she had seen the devil. Maybe it is not that normal to run around soaked in blood after all...
It did not happen much the next week - my ears stopped bleeding completely after three days. I cleaned them with cotton buds and sterile salt water every morning and did salt soaks in the evening. Sometimes I cleaned them with Provon in the shower, even though I'm not so keen on using soap on piercings. I tend to stick to the sea salt. Occasionally I took off the o-rings and wipe away the crusties that stuck to it.
One night while cleaning, I accidentally pulled up some of the skin in my lobe, so I could see a part of the fistula. The skin was fresh and intense pink, and somehow it made me extremely happy. It was kind of like the feeling you get when you see a newborn baby – it was so pure and frail.
I have gotten a lot of weird comment from strangers, like "Oh, you've got a new big ear stud... But why can I see through it? Wait, is there a big hole in your lobe?!" and the standard "Did that hurt?". My ears were scalpelled – off course it hurt. Unfortunately, I have not got the balls to give stupid answers to stupid questions, so I answer politely to all the shit I am receiving.
My mother is very conservative, but she tries to be open-minded about piercings. She never likes my piercings at the first sight, but she gets used to them. I did not want to show her my ears before I had gotten rid of all the blood, but when I did, she said: "Is there a large hole in your lobe? It looks like you've got marbles rammed through your ears". :)