I'm 16 years old, living in Newfoundland, Canada. My only piercings until May 1st 2007 were my ear lobes. About 2 years ago, though, I saw a conch piercing and absolutely fell in love. I thought it was beautiful, and I wanted one badly. I spoke with my parents about it, and they surprisingly agreed, so long as I didn't want any facial or body piercings. They accepted ear piercings as long as they weren't large gauge.
At A Glance Author FrogBag Contact FrogBag@bme.anon When Three months ago Artist Not sure Studio Industrial Tattoo Location Ottawa But, I spent 2 years postponing my piercing. I have high levels of sodium, apparently, or at least my doctor thinks so. Essentially, I react to pain much more strongly than most people. Most of my life people just assumed I was a pussy, but in actual fact I just feel pain more strongly. Immediately when I found this out, I decided that if I was going to get my piercing, I would have to use some sort of pain killer. I have some skin conditions that are treated with laser surgery, so I have some topical anesthetics in cream form on hand at home, so that was no longer an issue. I still managed to spend 2 years putting it off. I really was afraid of the pain, though. I heard that conch piercings are excruciatingly painful.
I left for the National Seminar in late April, which was being held in Ottawa. It was a debating event. I've been debating for a few years now so the tournament was not necessarily unusual for me. I've been to Ottawa before and loved the city, so I was pretty excited. On my very last day there, I decided that I wanted to finally get my conch piercing that I've been wanting for 2 years. I went to a few places, but the one that seemed by far the most reputable was Industrial Tattoo. I walked in, signed a few forms, grabbed some cash from the machine, and within 10 minutes I was in a room with a woman holding a needle. I did my research on this, so I was careful to make sure everything was sanitized and all that. I was asked to lie down on my right side, leaving my left ear exposed. She held the needle to my ear and just as I was about to scream "wait stop!" (because like I said, I'm a pussy when it comes to pain) she started. And finished. I didn't feel a thing. I sat up and asked "Was that really it? You're done?" and she nodded and confirmed. I was so surprised. I couldn't believe that after all the build up and fear, I barely even felt the needle go into my ear, or the barbell for that matter. I walked straight to Shoppers from there and bought the cleaning solutions the piercer recommended to me (Bactine and Spectro Jel). I picked them up and walked around the city some more with some of my debate friends before leaving that night.
I was instructed to wash my piercing twice daily (when I get up and go to bed, pretty straight forward). Of course, I was travelling, and flying out that night. So I washed it in to hotel room before packing up and leaving for the air port. Now, liquids were absolutely banned from carryon on planes at this point, so both my cleansers are in my checked luggage. Unfortunately for me (and a whole lot of other people), what was supposed to be a half hour's flight to Montreal got severely delayed because the entire radar system in Montreal went down for a few hours. So it was very delayed that we arrived in Montreal, and barely made our connector flight from Montreal to St. John's. Of course, after 4 and a half hours in the air, they decide it's too foggy to land in Newfoundland, and we ought to just turn around and go back to Montreal. 9 and a bit hours we spend in the air and we were right back where we started. We took our luggage and desperately tried to find a hotel room at 4 in the morning. We managed, and the first thing when we got there that I did was clean my piercing. There was a tiny bit of crusty stuff, nothing serious. It was the best case scenario of what my piercer had described to me. There was a bit of pain, nothing that some Advil Extra Strength couldn't take care of. We spent the next 4 days desperately trying to get back to Newfoundland, finally making it home. My parents really had nothing negative to say about my conch, which I was pleased with, but rather expected. I did learn a few things, though. That it's rather difficult to properly clean a piercing twice a day when you're separated from your luggage for many hours at time, in and out of air ports and random hotels. It was definitely a challenge keeping it clean but I succeeded rather well.
It's been over 2 months since I got my piercing done, and in the past 3 weeks there has been some blood (not much) and a fair sized bump on the back. I've been doing my best to keep chemicals away from it (in hair product and what not). There hasn't been any more blood in the past week, and the size of the bump has greatly diminished. Overall, I'm incredibly pleased with how it's turned out. I leave for England in a few days, and I'm considering an industrial while I'm there.