At A Glance Author Whitney Contact Whitney@bme.anon When Three months ago Artist Shannon Ollis Studio Empire Tattooing Location Asheville, NC I have been meaning to write my story for BME for a long time. I've been all over BME looking up experiences to help me with mine, so after 12 piercings of my own, I've decided to start giving back.
My daith piercing is my most recent, deepest and least troublesome piercing I've had. I got it on June 1st, 2005 in response to a lot of stress and that general piercing urge. I decided on Empire Tattooing as it is by far the best place in Asheville, NC that I've visited.
I was going to go before lunch, but realized that that would be a bad idea, and went for lunch and some ice cream before heading for Empire.
After the initial paperwork was finished, Shannon took me into her piercing room. She sat me down on her piercing table, which looked similar to doctor's examination table, and showed me where her various certificates were. She told me that the establishment had been inspected by the state heath department (as shown by one of the certificates), and that the establishment had also had a spore count test (as shown by another of her certificates). She explained that all the tools she would be using had been autoclaved and that her needles were single use and never before opened.
She then asked me about the placement of my piercing and what gauge I wanted in it. I chose a 16g captured bead ring and had her place it as hers was placed. She washed her hands thoroughly, then put on a base pair of gloves, over which she placed a second pair of gloves that got changed upon contact with my hair, with the outside of the sterile packets, everything.
She then showed me that she was opening everything (needle, receiving tube, jewelry) from sterile packets and showed me how the packets indicated that they had been sterilized or were entirely new. She then had me lay down on my side and began to clean my ear.
As much as I love piercings, I still get nervous just before I get a new one done. Thankfully, I had my sister with me who held my hand and told me what was going on as I couldn't see what was happening with my ear.
Shannon slid the receiving tube up to my ear and promised that it was going to be quick. She told me to take a couple of deep breaths. Upon breathing in deeply the second time, she pushed the needle through.
As with all my piercings, the initial piercing didn't hurt. I could tell that she was pushing a lot harder than any of my other piercings needed, but beyond that, it wasn't any worse than a helix piercing. She then pulled the needle through with the CBR right behind it. Just then, I felt a warm sensation dripping down my ear canal and I couldn't hear. Apparently I had bled enough down in my ear to fill it up. Shannon got to work on that right away. She cleaned up my ear canal and then put the bead in the CBR. This was actually the most painful part of the whole process because she kept putting pressure on my triple helix piercings which were not entirely healed at the time.
Once the bead was in, she had me sit up and make sure that I was feeling all right before proceeding with the aftercare instructions. Since I was feeing fine, she went ahead and gave me thorough aftercare instructions, including a recipe for a chamomile soak in case of swelling or tenderness. Once that was over, she made sure once again that I was all right and I hopped down off the table and headed home.
My daith piercing has by far been the least eventful healing of all of my piercings. For the first month, I soaked it 2-4 times daily in warm saline solution. This was a bit difficult as I more or less had to just shove a warm, wet cotton ball into my ear. I would often ask my sister or brother to do it as they could see better what they were doing. It was only a little tender for most of June. Towards the beginning of July, it began to get really sore and I had to be very careful when soaking it. Once that soreness had gone away, I reduced my soakings to 1-2 times daily. By the end of July, I could again wear ear buds to listen to music. Now, in late September, I've reduced my soakings to once every couple of days or so and it's doing fine. It still gets tender occasionally, but it seems to be doing quite well.
If you live in the Asheville area, I strongly recommend Shannon Ollis for any piercing you may want.