After giving it a lot of though (the pain, the healing process ... ) I finally decided to have my tragus pierced at the end of July. I went to the same piercer who had done both my navel and a second hole. The pain of getting it pierced wasn't actually SO bad. It wasn't a picnic, but it only lasted for a second and then you have your jewelery in and your good to go.
At A Glance Author r. When Three months ago Artist Jill Studio Cutting Edge Location New York, NY The first day or so my piercing was fine. It was tender, but it didn't hurt as much as I expected it to. UNTIL it started swelling, A LOT. My other piercings never swelled (they actually healed really fast and never went through a "gross" phase), but this one was getting out of control. I gave it salt walter soaks and put ice on it to keep the swelling down. Since it was really only where it was pierced that it was swelling, I thought that it was normal and that it would go down on it's own. Then it started to hurt and then throb TERRIBLY. It hurt a lot and my tragus was huge. It swelled the most on the inside, so my ear was blocked and it was very difficult to hear out of ear. I would have to tug my earlobe backwards to make a little hole so I could hear on that side. When I would wake up in the morning, my ear had a lot of puss in it. Things were not looking good.
I went to my piercer (the girl who pierced it wasn't there that day, someone else was working there) and the first thing he said was that he had never seen anything like that before! Way to make me feel comfortable ... he cleaned it up and then pressed as much of the puss out of the piercing to make the tragus slightly smaller and told me that I should clean it up with betadine and do salt soaks, and that if it wasn't getting better to come back, and that if it turned BLACK to go to the doctor ... I told him that I would be at the doctor WAY before it went black.
I did make an appointment at the doctor, who incidentally moved his office to right around the corner from my piercer. He didn't seem alarmed, but he did try to use alcohol on it and I told him that piercers recommend you stay away from it. He put some betadine on and then squeezed as much puss out as he could (which hurt a lot!) and then prescribed me some antibiotics to get the puss to flow out of my ear and the infection to go away.
The antibiotics where a lifesaver. They took a few days to kick in, but the pain was gone. The only annoying thing was that in caused the infection to leak out of my ear so I was constantly dabbing at my tragus with a q-tip. (Waiting on line to get into a club I would discreetly wipe my leaky tragus with a q-tip..it was pretty disgusting).
Only a few days after I started the antibiotics, the infection was gone and I had a nice, wonderful tragus piercing. I have no idea what could have gotten it infected, because I was very carefully with it like all of my other piercings. Something must have just touched it without me realizing. My pierced tragus feels a slightly different shape than the non-pierced one (it seems to be a little bigger on the inside), though it's not a visible difference (and since I never paid much attention to my tragus before it was pierced, maybe they were odd shapes to begin with.
All in all, I'm really glad to have had it done. After the whole ordeal, I was so glad that I didn't have to get rid of the piercing - I didn't want to have gone through all that pain for nothing. The piercers that helped me out with it were great and I will for sure go back for any other piercings in the future.
Aside from the pain that came from the infection, a lot of people may end up convincing you out of a piercing because of the pain. It only takes a couple of seconds for the needle to go in and out and the jewelery to be inserted, so don't sweat it! What's a couple of seconds for a piercing that will (hopefully) last forever? As long as you take great care of it during the healing process and don't skip out on cleaning (it becomes a pain after the first couple of days, but don't give up) you will probably end up happy with the results.