This whole story started off a year ago when I first made my way into body modification when I got my second lobes pierced – with a gun no less – and a helix done with a needle. I'd promised my father that I wouldn't be asking for anymore piercings for ages because they didn't seem that important then.
At A Glance Author Caroline Contact punkposs101@hotmail.com IAM Momentary_Seizure When Six months ago Artist Kurt Studio Krazyhorse Location Leicester, England Skip forward a few months and around Christmas time, I was asking if I could get pierced for my birthday in late January. After much convincing and late night talks with my father he finally said that I could get one in each ear.
This is where BME came in to help me and I started coming up with various ideas as to what I could get pierced. I knew that I wanted a second helix on my left ear as I didn't like the fact that I had just one, like a strong majority of other girls in my ear. For my right ear I had decided I wanted an anti tragus – I told my parents that although it was in a 'weird' place, you probably would only be able to see one of the balls. But then it hit me – if I did get it pierced, wouldn't it interfere with my second lobe piercing?
I continued to look at BME's ear pages and also loved the look of conches, rooks and daiths. I had such a difficult time deciding that even when I went into the studio on the Saturday morning before my birthday, I was still undecided about where to get pierced.
A friend and I walked into the studio on the Saturday after being all excited and still debating my piercings on the way down there. When we arrived, Kurt was doing a tattoo and I felt shot down as the tattoo didn't look anyway near completion. He told me to wait for about 10 minutes and he'd be done so Amy and I wandered around the small waiting area looking at tattoos with me making joke remarks about how I wanted the strangest of tattoos in the bizarrest of places to try and calm my nerves. We heard thank you's and arranging for next sessions and I knew it was about time for me to be pierced. And I still hadn't decided.
I went around the corner and sat on the chair whilst Kurt asked me what I wanted piercing. At this point I was so nervous I just blurted out I wanted my helix piercing on both sides – one below the helix I already had and another on the lower part of my cartilage. I cursed myself for wimping out and going for something pretty standard but at this point I was most focused on the needles that were about to be pushed through me.
I think that this was the point where I realised that it probably wasn't a good idea to get myself pierced there. I was all marked up and ready to be pierced, he touched my ear with the needle so I felt it break the skin... but then he stopped. He called a girl not much older than myself out from the back room and told her to watch what he was doing. She walked around me to see what was happening and proceeded to come out with "Oh my God you're bleeding!" As you can imagine, this was nice and reassuring...
Both helix were then pierced and the CBR's put in place and I was happy with them, despite the fact that they were pretty 'normal'. I cleaned them over the next few weeks with salt soaks and tea tree and everything seemed to be healing slowly. I thought this was because of having one on each side of my head so I thought nothing of it.
Jump forward a few months and in the middle of a May evening I had finally had enough. I had noticed a small lump forming on the back of my lower helix and it was still crusting but I had hoped that it would go away. I'd been using tea tree on it which healed the rest of my piercings, but it just wasn't sinking in to this one. Over the space of a week the lump had got bigger and I was able to twist my ear to see that I had a nice yellow bubble on the back of my piercing. I went into the living room and complained to my mum and upon seeing it she said that she's going to have to get the gunk out of it. The idea of my mum standing behind me, poking my ear with a sewing needle scared me to say the least. I made my excuses saying how it would probably get better and because of my stubborn attitude I didn't want to take it out.
Needless to say, her persistence led me to being seated on the sofa half an hour with an ice cube on the back of my ear to numb it so she didn't hurt me. I stood in the kitchen which had the brightest lights as she cleaned the gunk out of my ear – I was amazed at how much puss could come out of such a small thing. I promptly soaked my ear in salt water and left it alone for the rest of the evening.
The weeks that passed saw a vast improvement in the condition of my ear – there was no more junk, the lump had gone down but it still wasn't healing. And neither was my other helix, despite there being no great problems with that one. I had visited my friend in Brighton and made a point to buy some titanium CBR's as there was the small chance that I was allergic to stainless steel. When I returned home, I asked Kurt if he would change the earrings for me as he had the right equipment to do so. A few weeks after the change, my ears felt much more comfortable and I was beginning to think that they were healing.
Sitting here today, six months later and more mature I've realised that I really shouldn't have gone to the piercer I went to. Despite the fact that he is a nice guy, there was no cleaning of the jewellery in the first instance. This didn't strike me as too much of a bad thing as I thought that as long as I cleaned it well enough it shouldn't be too bad. That was the first big mistake. Another was the jewellery – I wasn't to know that I was allergic to stainless steel but now after wearing more steel jewellery (a bad idea, I know) I have actually realised that I am – due to my ears disliking me - allergic to it and should have requested to be pierced with titanium as there isn't as much of a chance of being allergic to that. Finally was my piercers gloves. In theory, the whole piercing area should be very clean but my piercer put on gloves then got out my un-claved jewellery and after piercing my first helix and have me bleeding over his gloves, he did not change them to get my other jewellery and pierce my second helix. I also imagine that my mother poking me with a sewing needle didn't exactly help matters
I am still in two minds as to retire the piercing – I know that I probably should after 6 months of discomfort but again, the stubborn side of me says that I shouldn't.
Despite the fact that I have had 6 months of slight-to-wince-worthy pain from sleeping on my right side and if I eventually do end up taking this piercing out, I no doubt will have quite an unsightly scar, I have learnt a valuable lesson and I hope that anyone reading this will not make the same mistakes that I made. Make sure you trust your piercer, you know what jewellery your body can cope with and please, above everything, make sure your piercing studio is clean, along with all the jewellery and equipment. I cannot stress this enough – I wouldn't wish my experience on anyone and hopefully with this information it shouldn't happen.