Oh, this hurts bad.
At A Glance Author Jill Contact vanillacrush3@hotmail.com When A week ago Artist Marty Studio Piercing Emporium Location Worcester MA That's what I was thinking when I got my third piercing, a light blue titanium orbital through my tragus and anti-tragus. My monroe piercing was quick and more of a rush feeling than a pain feeling, my surface piercing was longer, and pinched pressure but this piercing made me really grateful for the breathe in, breathe out direction of the piercer. I had heard that cartilage hurts more than other piercings. In fact, someone had told me about an industrial "honestly, I could've cried"; but when I think of a piercing and decide I want it, little can be said to sway me.
That being said, I decided on this particular piercing because it made me think of the ring around Saturn. I don't particularly care about astronomy, but when I first saw a version of this piercing that's what it reminded me of and I thought it was an almost graceful line for a piercing to follow. On the day I decided I was going in to get it done I had a list of Piercings To Do to choose from. I wanted my nostril pierced again, a navel piercing maybe, surface bars at my collarbone really bad, a tongue piercing. I narrowed it down like this: I have a very mobile job where small children sometimes flail limbs in my direction out of frustration that I'm making them do work so healing surface clavicle piercings seemed out of the question; I didn't want to miss a dance class because of a healing bellybutton piercing; if I went to my previously mentioned job with a swollen tongue...well, I wouldn't be able to; and I just wasn't positive I wanted the nostril piercing bad enough.
My concerns about the orbital were mostly placement. I definitely wanted it on my right ear, because my surface bar is on the left and I didn't want them to clutter up one side of my face, but I usually sleep on my side and with this addition I would have none left. I reasoned that my chiropractor says I should sleep on my back anyway and got on with it. Like I said, little will sway me to not get a piercing. Apparently even a good night's rest.
I got to the Piercing Emporium and told the girl at the counter a little about what I wanted and she said Marty was finishing up a piercing and would be right out. I had only been pierced by Marc before so I was kind of interested to see differences in technique, if I would notice any at all.
He came out and I explained what I wanted. At first he thought it might be better to do an industrial type thing with a curved barbell. I'm not positive now that I'm trying to recall, if it was definitely a curved barbell that was the option but he was trying to make sure I got the look I wanted since an orbital there sits almost out of your ear and on a slight diagonal. That was definitely what I wanted though so we went with the ring. He gave me the option of starting with two different pieces of jewelry since sometimes that heals easier for people, but I decided to start with just one ring and if it really wasn't working I'd come back and switch. He measured my ear and then I chose the jewelry—titanium captive bead ring.
Next we went in back to the piercing room and he got out all the little tools. He made a couple marks for the placement and I was ready to go with those. Then he tried out the clamp on my ear to see if I'd find that too painful or if he could, if he needed to, use it. The clamp was uncomfortable but definitely bearable, and I tend to have an "I know it's going to hurt just do it anyway" attitude when it comes to piercings because I know I'll love the result.
Throughout the procedure he told me what he was doing and I asked a few questions about piercing in general. I could definitely tell the difference when he was piercing the tragus versus the anti-tragus because one felt easier than the other, which makes sense since (the tragus, I think) one is thicker than the other. For the first part I didn't make a huge effort on breathing out and he reminded me to do so the second time which was good since the second one was more painful.
After the actual piercing he fixed the jewelry ends. I should mention, that although all of this hurt pretty bad it was only a considerable amount of pain in comparison to my other piercings, which were not cartilage piercings. Knowing now how it felt, if I were to go back and do it again or not I would still do it and I'm also considering other cartilage piercings so it's not really terrible.
The piercing came out perfect, I think both Marty and I agreed on that; it was exactly what I pictured.
It did seem to swell a bit. I slept on my back rather awkwardly the first week and now I'm used to it and it's pretty easy to find a comfortable position. It's still (almost three weeks later) pretty painful if it gets bumped, and even just touching it lightly sometimes makes it feel sore but it looks great and the sea salt spray generally helps any throbbing or pain or itching that happened in the first couple weeks. There is not a whole lot of dried lymph etc around it. A couple times in the night I rolled onto my side and woke up to find the bead of the jewelry almost to one side and after having to move it back to the correct placement I have made sure it didn't get pushed out of place again, because it's not really pleasant and furthermore I'm not supposed to be touching it or moving it. So for the parting note: what I really think has been helpful that I was not doing during my other piercings is that I've been taking a multi-vitamin. I can't be sure if that's why exactly, but it seems that I'm having an easier initial period with this piercing and that's really the only thing I've done differently.