After spending a gruelling week in hospital, I felt like I needed picking up a little. I'd spent a fair few days having needles stuck in me every which way... so I thought to myself - hey, what better reward than to have more needles stuck in me!
At A Glance Author Lucy Contact gunshot_glitter86@hotmail.com When A week ago Artist I never actually got his name... unprofessional huh?! Studio Tattoo and Piercing Parlour Location Wallasey, Wirral, Merseyside I'd been craving my tragus piercing for years, but coming up the £45 my regular piercers would charge was proving tricky, being an impoverished student. My boyfriend's sister is my piercing pal, as we both went to get our third lobes done together in January, so we trotted off so I could get my tragus and she could get the middle of her lobe, just where the cartilage starts.
I got my third lobe gunned here in January, and I have to say it was the quickest piercing ever. No aftercare sheet or forms to sign - just £2.50, a quick hello and BANG it was pierced and I was out of the door. I was a little nervous about having the slightly more awkward tragus area pierced here, but I'd heard there was a new piercer guy in and the rush of excitement and adrenaline that only a fellow mod enthusiast can understand was fast consuming me! Also here it was only going to cost me £25.
There wasn't much preparation to be honest. I was led into the room and sat on a dentist-style chair. I'd figured out that this piercing would be most similar to the cartilage piercing I'd had at the top of my ear a year or so ago, except a little thicker. I'd felt nothing with that, so I asked for freezing spray. I nervously asked him how much of this I would feel... he answered that it really wasn't that painful at all. I knew it was kind of his obligation to say that so I didn't run for the hills, but I sat tight and concentrated on a fixed point on the tiled wall.
I was lying almost flat on my back luckily for me, as I almost never fail to go faint after a piercing. It seemed to take forever for him to wheel the tray around to my right hand side and mark out the spot. I glanced and it quickly, nodding and gulping after not even paying much attention to where it actually was - there's only so much leeway with a tragus piercing, and I was just so nervous to get it over with.
Ok... the actual needle itself. He drove it through my tragus... YES it hurt. I let out an "arrrgh" of pain, but magically the pain disappeared once the cannula was inserted. I felt minimal discomfort as he fiddled around with my titanium stud and cleaned up some of the freeze spray. And here it came... I felt myself go pale and dizzy. The piercer dabbed above my top lip with a tissue, as apparently I was sweating there and on my forehead. I lay for a few minutes sipping on a cup of water that seemed to magically appear in my hand.
Within a couple of minutes I got up without falling over and admired it. It was just so... funky. It looked great against my pretty bog standard 3 lobe piercings. The great thing about this piercing was even though it was the most painful (I didn't feel any of my others one bit) the after pain was practically non existent. I didn't feel any of the usual burning sensations I get after piercings, where you feel like your ear is on fire or about to explode. He gave me an after care sheet (an improvement on last time) and I went straight to Boots for some Savlon spray to clean it with and some chocolate to get my energy back up. Instructions were to clean it three times a day - but I usually just manage morning and night.
Cleaning it is ok - minimal pain, but usually quite a lot of debris. The hardest part is cleaning the back, as your tragus kind of slants inwards the back of the earring is virtually impossible to see - so you have to guess. But I found I became pretty skilled at this by the 3rd day. What amazed me was how easy it was to cope with - I lay down automatically on my right hand side to sleep, and didn't feel a thing! There really has been absolutely no pain at all since I had it done. The only thing is it tends to bleed a little at night, and I wake up with little tragus-piercing-sized spots of blood on my (cream and beige - oops) pillows. Also fir the first couple of days it was still fairly swollen, and my ear kept getting really itchy inside and I couldn't scratch it! But this went down after a day or so and I also became skilled at manoeuvring my finger so I can scratch my ear when it gets itchy!
All in all I would say this is the easiest piercing I've had done. The pain itself was the most I've had, probably about a 6 out of 10. But this only lasted a few seconds, and if you can cope with that then a tragus piercing is a fairly low maintenence piercing to have I found. I love how it looks - obviously invisible if my hair is loose and covering it up, but when people notice it they say "wow" and comment on how original it is. I find it funny to tell people I got my "head" pierced as it looks more like part of my head than my ear! Thanks for reading.