I had been stretching my earlobes for several months, and most of it was effortlessly easy - just hang bunches of old stainless steel BCRs through whichever gauge of flesh tunnels I happened to have in at the time.
At A Glance Author DevLustCult Contact DevLustCult@bme.anon When A month ago Artist Myself Studio My bathroom Location My house However, when I reached 15mm (UK size) I seemed to hit a brick wall with my left ear. I was using stainless steel flesh tubes up until then, but a friend had given me 16mm flesh tunnels to use for my next stretch. Now, I love tunnels. I love how they stay in, and don't need stupid rubber "O" rings to keep them in place. So, naturally, I was dying to get them in.
My left ear has always been the problem one! In my eagerness to stretch (I would last 4 weeks TOPS before the urge got the better of me) I would sit with heavy, solid metal link key chains clipped through my left earlobe to loosen it up a bit. One night I remember sitting watching a movie while I hung 4 black T-shirts, all on their hangers, through the flesh tube in my left lobe! Watching the clock during that particular evening was torture (even more so than the weight of the T-shirts and hangers in my punished earlobe) as I was desperate to stretch up, but didn't want to try too quickly and make my "T-shirt" exercise a pointless waste of time.
Anyway, I lasted an hour with the T-shirts and was glad to remove the hangers from my ear. I felt like I had the bends! Such a weird sensation of balance returning to my head. So I washed up my hands, washed the new 16mm tunnel, lubed up the left lobe and started manipulating the skin to accommodate the new jewellery.
For the life of me, I could not make the tunnel slide through to the back! Because it is threaded, the skin was popping over the first ridge, then getting stuck in the "ditch" of the thread. Was so frustrating! But I was not to be beaten. I decided to FORCE the thread through, however painful, and screw the back on. ANYTHING to get up to 16mm.
So, gritting my teeth, I forcefully shoved the thread of the tunnel through until I could feel the steel through the back with my finger. Gingerly, I reached for the screw-on back plate and slowly began spinning it down onto the tunnel.
Now, as I turned the back plate, I realised I was trapping a good deal of skin between the plate and the thread. But I kept turning. And turning. Needless to say, the pain was immense! It looked slightly sunken when I literally could not tighten the thread any more, but nevertheless it was finally IN!!
This is the part where you can laugh at me, because for the next two days I was in agony with my left lobe! I bathed it with a saline soak three times daily, but it still hurt like a bitch and stank like crazy! I was getting some horrid pus which looked like cauliflower cheese sauce and blood, oozing from it. The left side of my head hurt and I felt like I was going deaf in my left ear!
(By the way, all this time my right ear was looking smug with its 16mm flesh tunnel easily installed!)
Long story short(er), I had trapped a lot of skin under the back of the tunnel and, eventually (after about a week) I was able to remove the whole thing, bathe it and re-insert it PROPERLY (and it slid all the way through, although still quite painful..)
This whole thing left me with an ugly little lip of extra skin once I had healed. I believe it's known as a "blow out". Anyway, it bugged me. I was under the misapprehension that upon stretching it a couple more times it would just vanish, or at least it would become less obvious. I was wrong.
I started stretching with clear acrylic plugs after 16mm, and was able to get up to 20mm easily with both ears (making sure I was taking my time) I promised myself to stop at 20mm but how often do we stick to the promises we make to ourselves?
At 22mm (stainless steel tubes) and indeed the last few mm up to that size, I had been contemplating the idea of scalpelling off that annoying, unsightly little extra bit of my earlobe that I had accidentally brought into being. So, one Sunday afternoon, I trapped that troublesome, unwanted guest between the steel of the flesh tube and the rubber "O" ring and went for a stroll. I thought I could just leave it at that and it would fall off (as I was cutting off its blood supply). I was half right, as I looked in the mirror when I got home and saw the blow out had turned white and looked pretty lifeless!
I decided to take things up a notch and end this once and for all! I went into the TOOLBOX and found a pack of unopened Stanley knife blades. I boiled one up in a saline solution, cleaned up my hands and ear and got ready to lose my blow out forever.
I started trimming from the inside out, steadily cutting until I could feel the steel of the flesh tube underneath, telling me the skin was coming off. It didn't hurt at all, which surprised me. It took only a few mins to trim that lip of skin from my ear. I held it between my thumb and index finger and had to get rid of it! I flushed it down the toilet and bathed my ear, which was trickling blood but nothing serious.
The bleeding stopped shortly and I enjoyed the rest of my Sunday. I went to bed and thought nothing of it until I woke up at 3am COVERED in blood! My pillow was ruined and it looked as it someone had slit my throat in the night. Dried blood clung to my chest hair and I felt faint! I staggered to the bathroom to clean myself up. The clotted blood around my trimmed earlobe was obscene! I was freaking out, and had to be at work in about 5 hours from that time!
Was scared to go to sleep, but I managed to nod off (my head on a black towel on top of my bloodstained pillow) until my alarm went off.
On and on it bled when I got up! It bled in the shower, it bled while I was brushing my teeth, it bled while I was getting dressed. I was genuinely getting angry with myself for being so stupid as to take a RAZOR SHARP BLADE to my skin!
Thankfully I managed to stem the blood by using cold air and paper tissues! I drove to work with both windows down, speeding to create a nice movement of air around my earlobe in the car. Luckily, it worked and didn't bleed again for the rest of the day (although I repeated the SAME damn bleeding that night and the following morning, until I got out into the fresh air!!!)
Three days it took for my left lobe to settle down after I attacked it with a Stanley blade. Is the result worth all the time, blood, pillows and tissue paper? Definitely. Now there is no trace of a blow out, but in hindsight I would much rather have used an acrylic plug to get to my target size, THEN slide through the flesh tunnel.
If you are willing to cut sections of your flesh off in the name of stretched earlobes, please make sure your pillows aren't white! Oh, and good luck!