About six months prior to getting my tragus pierced, I was craving something different. I had gotten a set of second holes added to my ear lobes when I was eighteen, but I was beginning to think about getting something different. Besides, when I started college, someone told me that I'd probably dye my hair at least once and get something pierced. By then, I was getting tired of dying my hair, so I decided to do something different and I had seen people with tragus piercings and I thought they looked cute, so I figured why not?
At A Glance Author Kit Contact Kit@bme.anon When Six months ago Studio Mike's Tattoos and Piercings Location Reading, PA My roommate was going to get her nose pierced on her eighteenth birthday in November, and I was going to go with her to get my tragus done. However, after a series of events had left me in a bad mood (including an ear infection, a flat tire, a dead car battery and studying for a test), I just decided to do it two weeks before her birthday. I had been reading over stories and information on the web, and I was kind of freaked out, but I figured if I didn't just go and get it done, I'd never have it done and I'd just get even more scared over it.
So I ended up leaving my roommate a note and I left and got money out, then I went to Mike's Tattoos and Body Piercings which my roommate and I had checked out a month earlier because we were curious about pricing and we had heard it was a pretty decent place. It's a small shop on Lancaster Drive in Reading, which is easy to miss if you're not looking for it and it's very clean to the point that it smells clean, like a doctor's office. And, as far as we were concerned, their pricing was reasonable. For my tragus, it cost $40 and I think her nose ended up being $45.
But, by the time I got there, I was so nervous, I was shaking. I walked in there, asked if I could get my tragus pierced and they set me up with liability forms and asked for my ID. They set me up with an apprentice piercer, which made me more nervous, but the guy she was apprenticing under was watching her. So, I went into one of the backrooms with them and sat in the chair. Everything was really sterile and prepackaged. She started by asking which side I wanted pierced and then she marked my ear with a marker and showed it to me to make sure the placement would be okay. I chose the left side because I sleep on my right and I had an ear infection on that side at the time. After that, she put the clamp on my ear with an elastic band around it to keep it from moving. However, she wasn't gripping the clamp right or something and it kept slipping, so this scared me a little more, but the guy stepped in and showed her how to hold it and then just stuck the needle in for her. I didn't hear any popping or crunch or anything, which was what I was really scared of. It was practically over in an instant. The only thing that really hurt was the clamp and the pulling that they were doing to make sure they didn't hit the other side of my ear.
After the needle went through, she took it out and put the cbr in, which resulted in more tugging. It bled a lot and it was still bleeding a little once she closed the cbr, but she explained that it should stop. She showed me the piercing in the mirror and I thought it looked pretty good, but the cbr was a little big for my ear. It was just really sore for the first few weeks.
For aftercare, I had bought some H2Ocean at the shop which worked pretty well and I also started to take some Zinc and some Tylenol for the soreness. For about a week, I was using regular Dove soap, which was my mistake, and it started irritating the piercing so I started using Softsoap twice a day for about a month before just using it in the shower (which I still do). I'm really paranoid about infections since both of my lobe piercings had gotten infected pretty bad when I first got them done, especially the first ones and some of the stories I had read about people with infected tragus piercings scared me. However, it healed pretty well and it's been about six months since I had it done. At one point, I got scared that I was developing a keloid and I had gone back to the shop and asked them to look at it, but they said it was fine and to keep cleaning it. I went back and had the cbr changed about a month ago to a smaller size, but it's still a little big and I probably won't get it changed again for a little while.
Overall, the experience went much better than I had expected it to go and I love the piercing. It might be my last piercing, though I'm still considering getting my cartilage done at a shop with a needle instead of the mall or something.