To start off, I have 3/4 inch lobes, a 14 gauge self pierced septum, and what is now a 4 gauge upper cartilage. My cartilage, sadly enough, got pierced at my local mall. I went through the pain of having an infected piercing the first time I had the procedure done, simply because of the short "barbells" (studs) that they use with the piercing guns (I know). Well I was ignorant of the dangers of piercing this way when I had this done, because I was only 14 and this was my very first piercing. I really wanted to have it done, so I went back and had my cartilage re-pierced. This time, luckily, it healed perfectly fine. This was WAY before I had known of the dangers of the piercing gun.
At A Glance Author John D Contact JMDHOCKEY11@aol.com When A month ago Artist Me- stretching Location Columbus, GA/ Federal Way, WA Well, time had past, I had stretched my ear lobes to 3/4 inch, and these were the piercings that I finally convinced my mother to take me to the local piercing shop (so everything went well, of course). It did take a lot of convincing to get my mother to go through with paying 50 dollars to get my lobes pierced, but I had explained to her the dangers of the piercing gun and why piercing needles are much safer. I was getting bored with my little 18 gauge cartilage piercing and wanted something bigger. The stretching bug caught a hold of me again. This one really appealed to me when I was searching on the web, and I saw a photo of a man with large black plugs in his lobes and a matching plug in his cartilage, exactly in the spot where my piercing is. From there, I was determined to stretch my cartilage. Regretfully, I did this stretching without really reading up on the problems of stretching cartilage.
When I started stretching, I went straight to a 14 gauge. This was a very easy stretch, probably because I had the piercing at 18 gauge for 4 years. Since this went so easily, I decided that I was going to go straight ahead to a 10 gauge. There wasn't really a problem with that one either. This one I let heal for about a month, as I would for my lobes (remember, this was before I knew about the longer time between stretching cartilage), and then I made the stretch to 8 gauge. This time there wasn't a problem, except for it being a little more painful. I let this heal, and repeated it for 6 gauge. This is where the fun began, I noticed that it swelled up a little more than it did when I performed the previous stretches, so I just figured that I would allow it to heal for 2 months. At the end of the 2 months, I did the 4 gauge stretch, and this one was very painful, I had a glass plug that I put in it with a black o-ring backing it. I think that I had some kind of reaction to the glass, because I woke up the next morning and noticed that it was very swollen. The o-ring appeared to fall off, and I immediately reduced the jewelry to a 10 gauge.
I let my piercing heal completely over a period of 6 months at 10 gauge, and then I noticed that something was wrong with the back of my piercing, there was a bump! I've read about these bumps and was very mad at myself for speeding up the stretching process. Then one day I started picking at it, I looked at it in the mirror and noticed that it had a grayish color to it. I thought to myself, "Is the o-ring really in there?", and it was. The bump had eventually dried to where I could peel it off, not very easily, and it was there, an o-ring for a 4 gauge plug. It had completely healed over the o-ring, and to my surprise, after taking it off, there was no bump at all.
Well after this fiasco, I had the fun job of re-stretching. The only difference being that this time I did it the right way. I left a period of at least 4 months before I did the next stretch, and not to my surprise, it healed perfectly. Now I have a 4 gauge cartilage piercing with a black plug to match my water buffalo horn 3/4 inch plugs for my lobes.
For my future, I am considering stretching my cartilage further to possibly a 2 gauge or 0 gauge. I did a self-pierced septum, which will be another story, and I will be up in the Great North (Alaska) in the fall for college at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to study anthropology. And I must urge anyone whom is thinking of stretching their cartilage, TAKE IT SLOW!