At A Glance
Author	Lisa
Contact	Lisa@bme.anon
When	A month ago
Studio	Tribal Ways
Location	Boston, MA

I've been pierced before at Spiderbite and Chameleon, and I'm used to surroundings like a doctor's office: newly opened packages of jewelry, multiple changes of gloves, even inquiries as to whether I have latex allergies. It's a lot of fuss to go through for a prick of a needle, but it's reassuring because it proves the piercer is concerned about contamination and sterility. However, this time when I wanted to stretch my earlobes I wasn't near Spiderbite, and Erin at Chameleon recommended I stretch my ears with tape instead, saying it wasn't their policy to stretch ears above 8 gauge. I was currently at 8 gauge in my earlobes, and while I appreciated her advice, I felt that I knew the condition of my ears better and that they were healed enough to use a taper. So when a friend suggested Tribal Ways, I collected my jewelry and walked down the street to their studio.

Since bars and clubs never fail to ID me, I had specifically brought my driver's license with me, along with some money, but it turned out I only needed one of them. The man who greeted me at the door didn't ask me for ID, or make me sign any waivers or paperwork at all. He quickly listened to my explanation that I wanted my earlobes stretched to 6 gauge and my second holes, which had closed up, stretched back to 14 gauge, then took my jewelry and disappeared. "I'm going to soak these. It'll be five, ten minutes," he told me. I was a little surprised he didn't offer to autoclave the jewelry, but figured it must be their standard practice. I paid him $20 for the four stretches and settled on a chair to wait. After all, I tried to convince myself, I sterilized my jewelry at home with alcohol -- how bad could it really be?

When I followed him into the piercing room five minutes later, I didn't see an autoclave at all, although there might have been one somewhere. However, nothing used on me had gone through one. Instead, the piercer used his bare fingers to pick out a 14g and a 6g taper from one of a row of Tupperware containers filled with fluid. It smelled like alcohol, and I'm sure it was some chemical disinfectant, but using unpackaged tapers made me suspect they were reused.

I should have asked for my money back then and walked out the door. Instead, because I was impatient to have my ears done, I decided to let it slide. The piercer picked up my new jewelry from the liquid, still with his bare fingers, and opened the rings, then set them down on a paper towel with a squirt of surgical lube. Finally, he put on a pair of gloves - I had been watching the box and waiting for him to put them on; I'd made a quick decision that if he never put on gloves I would have to speak up. I was glad I had cleaned my ears myself before I came, though, because the piercer didn't bother. He dabbed the 6 gauge taper in surgical lube and slid it quickly through my right ear, followed by the jewelry. It was a sharp pinch but not too uncomfortable. The second ear followed the same way, then the process was repeated for the second holes with the 14 gauge taper. Because one of the second holes had closed up so much, he had to put the taper through from the back of my ear, and the awkward angle made for a very sharp pain (far more than the actual piercing) and some bleeding. The piercer then removed his gloves again and threw them out before he snapped the balls into the captive rings with bare fingers.

I paid him, so nervous I forgot to tip, and immediately went home to clean my ears, which were still slick with lube and a little bit of blood from my left second hole. I was worried about the possibility of contamination or infection afterward, and I kept checking my stretched ears, but they were barely sore ... and more surprisingly, they didn't even seem to be lymphing. Maybe I really had been ready for the stretch, I figured, if my ears had taken it so well. Every day for a week I pushed the tunnels back and forth in my ears, checking for anything on it, but they seemed to be completely clean. Finally, a little over a week later, I decided that they must be healed enough to change the jewelry. I had a pair of horn spirals in the same gauge that I was eager to wear. But the first bad sign was a sharp pinching feeling when I jostled the jewelry taking off the o-rings. Then, when I pulled out the left tunnel, I was shocked. Somehow, the discharge had been trapped inside the piercing, building up until it was almost solid. I swabbed out as much as I could with a q-tip, but I was afraid to leave the jewelry out of an obviously unhealed hole for too long. The other ear was even worse. The discharge was yellow, and there was also some blood. I cleaned both in a hurry as best I could and put the jewelry back in, promising myself to soak them later, and rushed off to work.

The next day was even worse - more oozing, more blood, more pus-like substance in my right ear. It hurt to remove and reinsert the jewelry, and while I shouldn't have been playing with unhealed piercings, it was the only way I could see to clean them at all. I was seriously concerned my ear might be infected. But I kept cleaning them twice a day, and eventually they started to itch, then to heal. My right ear took significantly longer to heal than my left ear, oozed more, and was far more red and painful. I suspect it was actually infected after being stretched. Luckily there were no visible rips or tears in my earlobes, but if there was any blood, there must have been at least minor tears in the skin. I'd obviously overestimated how ready my ears were to stretch, and the situation in which I had it done probably didn't help matters at all.

I don't plan on going back -- I've never had problems like this with any other piercing place, and I can probably create a more sterile environment in my own bathroom. Instead, I think I'll take Erin's advice and stretch with tape. I bought a roll of Teflon tape, since it's thinner than electrical tape (I've tried in the past and found it too thick) and doesn't have adhesive to irritate my ears, and as soon as my ears heal I'll try stretching using that. Although I'm not sure I agree that it's bad to stretch with tapers, I'm clearly too impatient to be trusted with brute-force solutions! I'm eager to avoid any more trauma to my ears, since I'd like to get them bigger (and have the option of letting them shrink back afterward) without the complications of scar tissue, so tape seems like a good option, especially as I progress to larger gauges. The other option I'm considering is buying my own tapers, and using them after a long, hot shower. Either way, I'm going to give my ears time to rest and heal before I do anything else to them. Impatience and compromise were what got me in this fix in the first place.