I grew up in a very conservative fashion, I actually knew no one who had been modified beyond the generic lobe piercings.
At A Glance Author emsidoodles Contact emmalednor@hotmail.com When A month ago But, I recently turned 16 and decided I wanted to do something to remember it by. I'd always been a big fan of body modification of all sorts (of course, just admiring from a distance), but until that time I had had to settle for simple pierced lobes and a pierced navel (for various reasons, age, job requirements and the people around me to name a few)
I also recently met a friend who is heavily modified, and was always tempting me to get something outrageous done; however affording a new piercing was not something I could do easily (and I had my work and school rules to contend with).
Thus, I decided to deal with one of my existing piercings and make it more interesting – namely stretching my right lobe piercing.
I knew very little about stretching at the time and, in retrospect, should have found out more about it before I threw myself head first into the experience.
After making my uninformed decision, I dragged a friend (who knew equally as little as I did) with me to a well-known jewellery store in my town and asked the woman who was working there at the time for some advice on flesh tunnels and lobe stretching in general.
This was where I made my first mistake - taking the advice of someone who was not trained to give it to me, and obviously was not as experienced as I first assumed.
The woman in the shop told me I could easily go from my 20/18ga (quite average, normal, lobe piercing) to a 6ga (4.1mm) without any problems (and without using tapers but pinchers instead). I noticed, at this time, that she had two stretched lobes and just took her word as truth. I paid a measly sum for a 6ga pincher and rushed off to put it in.
Of course, after smothering it, my ears and most of my face in the process, with Vaseline there was still an immense amount of pain and lack of insertion.
It, in fact, hurt more than when I had had both my lobes and navel pierced – and even my logical thought process could understand that that should not be the case, I stopped trying to get it in after deciding this.
Instead of going back to the shop, I decided to do a bit of research myself, which was the best decision I made during this entire experience.
After reading up on stretching I found out just how wrong she had been, it's lucky I hadn't forced the pincher in! I thanked my lucky stars I'd listened to my body's ability to feel pain, and put the pincher somewhere I would not be tempted to get to until my lobe was ready.
I talked to my modified friend, next, who talked to his tattoo artist for me. He told me, instead, to start with a 14ga and then a 10ga and 8ga.
This sounded far more comfortable and I took his advice and bought some jewellery, tapers this time, for each of these gauges. I did do them in the correct order, and made sure I was cleaning it often with a lukewarm saline solution, but once again I made a rookie mistake.
After just two weeks, I had stretched to 8ga and had switched the taper for a flesh tunnel. Needless to say, my ear was not very happy about it! I was aware I was rushing things but decided it would be the same effect as getting a dermal punch and ignored the problems I was having.
After all of this, I still ignored expert advice and did not take the flesh tunnel out.
Even after my mistakes, I have so far had no more problems with it at all. It took hours to stop hurting, and about two days for the pressure to decrease and it now very comfortable and easily moved around within the hole. I even found out that it is not actually a perfect 8ga; it is, in fact, 3mm, which means that it, is slightly smaller than 8ga.
I advise anyone thinking of stretching their lobes, like I did, to get some good, professional advice on how to go about it and not to make the same mistakes that I made. After all, what difference is a couple of weeks going to be when you're risking your overall health? I am certainly going to be taking things slowly and listening to advice from now on.The mistakes I made could have potentially been very dangerous, and my aftercare was limited, I urge you not to risk the same things
On a lighter note, I have had many positive comments on the stretch and everyone I know has been very accepting of it. It has inspired m to keep pursuing the stretching and to even get some more piercings in the near future!