Hello BME, I would like to share my experience with you about stretching ears too quickly, which of course I did against all advice, and paid dearly for it.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When A month ago Artist Me Studio Home Location North Dakota I had gotten my ears pierced at 12 gauge, a good starting point for
stretching because it started me slightly big but left plenty of flesh to be used for stretching. I allowed my ears a full 4 months of healing before I began to stretch them, letting the weight of the hoops help out what little they could. I then went to the shop in which I had my ears pierced at and they used a taper to stretch my ears up to a 10 gauge. They healed extremely quickly, yet I held back my excitement and waited the full month and a half before I stretched again.
I then stretched to 8 gauge and got hoops once again to gain the small benefit of the weight of the jewelry. They stretched very easily and healed quickly, as did the last size. This time I became very involved in work and classes, so about 3 or 4 months had gone by and my ears had actually almost stretched another gauge just by the weight of the jewelry and sleeping on them. When I went in to the shop again to get them gauged they dead stretched my ears with just the jewelry itself, 6 gauge acrylic plugs, because of the amount they had stretched alone.
The easiness of the last gauge gave me more incentive to stretch further and faster than usual. I had stuck to a very slow and healthy stretching schedule and allowed my ears the proper time to heal before stretching them to the next size. However, after 6 gauge was so easy, I decided that my ears wouldn't need as much time to heal, so I foolishly bought my own acrylic taper at local store and completely skipped over 4 gauge and went right up to 2 gauge. This was the first foolish step I took stretching my ears.
The taper had gone through rather smoothly and easily, yet upon putting the plugs in I had noticed I had tore my lobes fairly badly, and they began a 3 day bleeding extravaganza. I was too determined to stretch big and quickly regardless of the problems it would cause because I figured it wouldn't have as large of an impact at the smaller sizes.
I let my ears heal a good month about since I had destroyed my ears pretty badly in the last extreme stretch session. I started a trend of buying my own tapers and doing them in my house instead of going in and having them done, which only gave me more freedom to stretch my ears as large and as fast as I wanted. I purchased a 0 gauge taper and stretched my ear again, this time taking much longer and required much more force than the last because my ears had built up a large amount of scar tissue from tearing my lobes. Once done, my ears once again bled, yet not as bad as the last time.
Within a week of stretching, i stretched again up to 00 gauge, this time tearing my ears horrendously, and for the first time I figured I should slow down or even take the plugs out and allowing some time for them to gauge down a little. Yet, I was still too stubborn and I decided to give them a good two months or so to allow them to heal nice and good.
Within this time my lobes became extremely thin, especially for only 00g, and because of my constant lobe tearing and poor sanitation my ears became horribly infected, yet I remained stubborn. I lived with the infection for about 2 weeks, frequently soaping them and soaking them in salt soaks, and I had noticed that my ears had turned a very strange texture, very "squishy".
The next morning I awoke to find that my left lobe had broken completely and the plug was laying a good two feet away from my bed on the ground. My lobe had broken so easily because of the strange "gooey" feel they had taken on because of the infection. I immediately removed the right plug only to reveal terrible blow out.
Once Allowing a good month of healing without jewelry, my lobes had closed up fairly well compared to the condition they were in. My left lobe grew back slightly skinnier and longer than the right as a result of the lobe breaking. In the end, my lobes became extremely rough and rigid with an extreme build up of scar tissue and are slightly deformed on the back because of the blowout they had suffered. My ears are at 8 gauge right now and will only stretch very slowly.
I had become too impatient and did very foolish things as far as stretching goes. So in the end i must say what everyone has heard millions of times: Don't every stretch too fast or skip gauges no matter how eager you are to get to the next size.