First, a bit of background. Before I decided to get this lobe piercing I had been stretching five existing lobe piercings, three in my right ear and two in my left. I had the bottom two on the right ear up to 10g and the top to 12g when I realized that I wouldn't have enough room to stretch them all any higher than 10g. I then decided to take the top two out and let them close in order to have better positioning for a single larger-gauge hole in that area, eventually ending up with two 10g holes in each ear with room to go bigger if I chose. I retired the top two holes in July of 2005, and soon after that stretched the three remaining holes to 8g while reserving the fourth matching plug for when the other holes closed up enough to repierce one hole at 8g.
At A Glance Author Moony Contact Moony@bme.anon IAM Moony When A month ago Artist Steve Kish Studio Unusual Expressions Location Austin, MN Various factors made me wait until the end of May of this year to do the repiercing. The biggest one was my job, having started a new one in the beginning of April with an employer who is very strict about body piercings. I applied for the job five months before getting the job, knowing I was mostly guaranteed to get it, but also knowing that far ahead that they were strict I put it off until I could be sure it would be okay. I was all ready over the formal limit for ear piercings for females but I finally asked for and got the go-ahead to get the other piercing from my supervisor in the beginning of May on the grounds that it would be a lobe piercing and would match the others. My girlfriend also wanted to go along because she hadn't seen me be pierced yet, and since I'd been talking about it for so long she just wanted to be witness to the grand event. We had to wait until we had the same evening off, putting more of a delay on it.
On May 27th I finally got coordinated with my girlfriend and my piercer, giving him the 8g glass Wildcat single-flared plug to autoclave in preparation for the piercing the next day. I verified that he felt the plugs were long enough to accomodate the swelling after piercing, and he agreed that based on the length of the jewelry and the thinness of my lobes it would be more than adequate. He didn't have any 8g needles but we agreed that he would pierce at 10g and immediately stretch it to 8g with a taper to put the jewelry in. The next evening I arrived at the studio with my girlfriend, a little nervous and berating myself for having butterflies over a simple lobe piercing. After all, I'd had far more tender "parts" pierced with less nervousness and another piercing done at a large gauge, but still the idea of such a large gauge going through my flesh (again) made me a bit jittery. He cleaned off the chair after the previous customer and we made small talk as he got set up for my piercing. He mentioned that the plug didn't appear to be exactly 8g, a difference I'd noted when I received the jewelry a year earlier. He compared it to the 10g needle and suggested that it was closer to 9g, a not uncommon variance in glass jewelry due to how it is made. I agreed, and also agreed with him that we probably wouldn't need the taper to get the jewelry in but he'd keep it nearby just in case. He cleaned and marked my ear and allowed both my girlfriend and I to okay the placement before proceeding. I confirmed that he would be able to put the plug in with the flare on the back side of the lobe, making it necessary for him to pierce from the back in order to follow the needle with the jewelry, and he assured me that that was no problem.
He picked up the needle and asked if I was ready. My girlfriend commented, "Whoa, that is one BIG needle", to which I replied something to the effect of not needing a reminder like that at that time. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths and refused to give in to the instinct to put a death grip on the sides of the table with my hands in order to stay relaxed. He counted down 3 to 1 and then pierced. I felt a brief but sharp pain and heard a gross tearing sound as the needle went through what I figured out later was part of the fistula of one of the closed piercings. Once the needle was through I opened my eyes to see my girlfriend turning her head away in disgust. I teased that she was the one who insisted on coming to watch, and she said "Yeah, I did, but that was still pretty disturbing." He smoothly followed the needle with the plug through the back and popped the o-ring on with little fumbling. He wet a paper towel with a bit of disinfectant to swab at the piercing and commented that it wasn't even bleeding. I got up and looked in the mirror, pleased to see that even though it was a bit farther from the bottom hole than the top one was on the other side, it still looked very well-placed within the grand cockeyed scheme of the ear "project". The others were gunned and uneven anyway, so this one being a little off-kilter was no problem. I thanked him profusely and made a bit more small talk about recent happenings with the store, then left.
Aftercare and healing were very uncomplicated. The only time it hurt was when I accidentally put pressure on it in bed and didn't bother me at all after the first five days. The piercing barely lymphed and only bled tiny bits during the first few days after piercing, mostly when using a q-tip to help clean between the o-ring or flare and my ear after washing in the shower. Five short weeks later it was healed and I was able to remove the jewelry completely to give it a good scrubdown. To my surprise there wasn't a whole lot of junk built up around the flare, something I'd been a bit concerned about happening. The hole itself actually looks very different from the stretched gunned ones. I can't put my finger on exactly how, but it just looks...healthier. Anyhow, it was a long time in coming-almost a year, in fact-but I'm more than pleased with my newest lobe piercing that completes my lobe "project".