I want to start writing about my experience by saying that I absolutely love body piercings of all kinds. Normal ear piercing to extreme body piercing. I only want my experience to be a warning of what can happen if a piercing gets infected and what to do if that happens.
At A Glance Author anonymous When Two years ago Studio LunaSea Location Providence, Rhode Island My experience took place while I was in college. I had my ears pierced three times each and I had two cartilage piercings in my left ear. I decided to get a ninth piercing. It would be in the cartilage my right ear on the inside. For all of my other piercings I had gone to lame mall counters who had used a crude gun to do the piercing. I know this is close to sacrilage, for this piercing I decided to go to an actual studio and be safe and professional about it. Luckily, all of my other experiences had gone fine despite having been done at malls counters.
The actual piercing experience was perfect! The artist who did my piercing was heavily pierced and tattooed himself and he was careful to explain every step he went through to me. The place was sanitary and they did an excellent job. I emerged from the studio with a tiny ring in my right ear and I couldn't have been more pleased. Before I left, the studio had been careful to explain all of the care and safety procedures with me (though I already knew them) and off I to CVS to buy some of the care products on the list.
That night I ran into a friend who gave my a huge hug accidently ramming her head into my right ear in the process. One of the first things on the list of care instructions for a new piercing is to make sure the piercing does not sustain any trauma in the weeks following the procedure. Needless to say this was the kind of trauma that you were instructed to avoid.
Despite my careful cleanings and other precautions in the days that followed my ear never fully recovered from the run in with my enthusiastic friend's head. My piercing was done on a Sunday and by Wednesday it was so swollen and purple that I had to visit my campus health station. They instructed me to go straight back to the piercing studio and have the earring removed. I was crushed. At this point I had constant extreme head pain, but i loved this piercing and was devasted that I would have to remove it.
I went to the studio and again they were very professional. They immediately took me to have it removed. As the guy went to remove the earring (this starts to get on the gross side as a warning) at the slightest touch from him the piercing began to ooze as it was an infected wound. He immediately stopped what he was doing and, to show how sanitary and professional the studio was, took the appropriate health precautions and suited up with a mask and apron in addition to the gloves he was already wearing. He removed the earring with minimal pain, but when he cleaned it it was excruciating and despite my best efforts tears streamed uncontrollably down my face. As I left they again gave me specific instructions on care.
For everything that occurs after this point I have to point fingers at the health professionals that handled my case. I can't blame the piercing studio for my infection, I believe they were very sanitary. The head trauma seems the most likely culprit, but despite my careful cleanings it is also possible that I wasn't careful enough.
At this point, my piercing had been removed and I was left with an infection. The doctor that dealt with me at my campus health services should have known what would happen to an infected piercing at this point, but I was given no warning. They also never tested the puss that was oozing from my piercing. In fact, the three doctor's office that I dealt with in the following 2 weeks neglected to do so assuming they knew what kind of bacteria they were dealing with and prescribing about 4 different medications that were completely ineffective since they were designed to combat the incorrect type of bacteria.
For those of you who don't know, cartilage piercings are more dangerous than normal ear piercings because the cartilage receives very little blood. A normal ear piercing that gets infected is not to be ignored but it heals much easier on its own because the blood can get to the infection and the white blood cells present in the blood can attack the bacteria and clean out the infection. Since the cartilage does not receive as much blood the infection has more time to grow and become dangerous because there is less blood flowing to the infection and there is therefore not enough to combat the infection. Even when you take a prescription drug to help aid in the fight against the infection, the medicine travels through the bloodstream to get there and since, as I've mentioned, there isn't as much blood flowing to the cartilage it is still tough to beat an infection even with prescription drugs.
Now, if you have an infection and the piercing is removed, the piercing will close up and trap the infection inside. The wound then abcsesses. This is what happened to my ear overnight. It is absolutely gross, but an abcsess is basically trapped puss, and puss is what is left of white blood cells after they've battled bacteria. So, I had the piercing removed Wednesday and by Friday night I had to take a trip to the ER to have the abcsess lanced, meaning they had to slice it open to let the puss drain. Very gross. And very painful. And very expensive. The ER lanced the abcsess on my ear without anesthesia and in an effort to keep the wound open so the puss would drain, inserted a rubber band that stuck out of the new slice wound in my ear and put a stitch through the elastic and through my ear to keep it in place. I found myself, for the second time in a week, unable to fight the tears of pain streaming down my face. I had also been getting little sleep because I was living hour to hour on advil trying to combat the extreme constant head pain of this terrible infection.
By the following Tuesday nothing had gotten better. My ear had an elastic stitched to it and sticking out of it, there was constant puss draining into the gauze that I had to keep wrapped around my head like civil war head dressings, the advil was barely keep me sane, I was popping prescription drugs that, unbeknownst to me were having no effect on the infection because they weren't meant to fight the bacteria that was infecting my ear, and my ear had swollen to an extremely scary size. I called my parents, sobbing with pain, and told them I had to go home and see real doctors to help treat the infection.
Another week went by and I visited doctor after doctor, and still none of them thought to test the bacteria constantly draining from my ear. I visited an ear/nose/throat specialist who removed the ridiculous and ineffective elastic band from my ear and professionally lanced the abcsess (again) but this time with local anesthetics. I had no idea the doctor had even touched my ear let alone surgically made a tiny incision. The next doctor that saw me at my doctor's office was an intern. They young man, asked, "Has anyone taken a culture of the bacteria to test what it is?" No. They had not. That was immediately done and when the lab results came in everyone was shocked to find that the bacteria was pseudomonus, a particularly nasty bacteria that was very hard to fight. They quickly changed the medication and by the following morning (combined with the fact that the abcsess had been professionally lanced) I woke up with almost no pain and even forgot to take Advil that afternoon. (A stronger pain reliever would have been prescribed but I am allergic to coedine).
With the infection slowly healing after more than 2 weeks of trauma to my cartilage I watched as my ear slowly began to shrink down from it's swollen state. I was relieved to have no pain and happy to see my ear returning to a normal size. But then I watched as my ear shrank past the point of normalcy and curled up slightly resembling a boxer's "califlower" ear. I had a brief bout of panic looking in the mirror and realizing not only would I not have a "cool piercing" but my ear would never even look normal and that it would be permanently deformed.
It has been a couple of years since my whole piercing debacle and I haven't had any more piercings since. It's not that i don't want any and it is not that I am afraid they will also become horrible deforming. It's almost as if I am in mourning over the loss of the piercing that went wrong. I often think about what I would do if i could go back in time and chose whether i would do it all again. I always come up with the answer that I would have it pierced all over again-no question. I would avoid my friend in the weeks following so that she could not bang me in the ear with her head and I would have been even more vigilant, careful, and gentle when cleaning the piercing.
My ear is still deformed. It looks like a slightly shrunken version of my other ear. Most people don't notice it, some friends say it's "cute", and my sister gets slightly sad when I do my impression of it curling up and shriveling. One friend said he'd trade one of his normal ears for my ear any day. As for me, I just think of it as the result of a choice that I made. A normal ear would be nice, but my deformed ear is fine. And my comical impression of it "shriveling up" always gets a good laugh. The result could have been much worse had the infection gone on much longer. The doctors might have had to surgically remove part of the ear or the infection could have spread to my brain.
I know this is a long and sometimes gross story, but I think it should be shared. Not to deter people, but only to make them aware of what can happen even if you are careful about cleaning. I'm not saying people shouldn't get cartilage piercings-I still love the other two that I have. Just be aware before you do, and if one ever does get infected seek medical attention right away. My ear could have been spared if the medical professionals I saw had known more or maybe if I had gone to a specialist right away.