I personally love multi-ear piercings. I already had my rook, first second and third piercings done (and others that I had to take out, because the got infected.) The only thing was, I hated having a rook piercing by its self. I thought it looked normal and boring. I felt that way because after I got my rook pierced, a few other students at my school liked it and did the same.
At A Glance Author anonymous When Three months ago Artist Johnny Studio Planet Ink Location Ottawa Since September I saved money for another piercing. I knew that I wanted to get something, but I wasn't sure what. So for months I put off getting that piercing (but I was also busy with school, and I live somewhat far from the city). It wasn't until March Break that I went to Planet Ink to get a piercing.
(A bit of background info: at the time I was unemployed, but put aside money just to get a piercing. Also, I didn't know what piercing to get, because since I still at home, my parents make the rules. And the rule being that I can only get piercings in my ears. Well, for the time being anyways, I hope that changes soon.)
So that day I went with my boyfriend, twin sister and her boyfriend. We sat around and thought what piercing I should get. My sister loves conch piercings, and I did/do too, so I really wanted to get that. The thing was, my sister was also planning to get that (not that same day, but in the future) and I didn't want to copy her. She said it didn't matter to her. So to keep it a bit different, I got my conch done on the same ear as my rook, and the opposite side that she wanted to get her piercing. Originally, I was going to get my conch done with a ring, but the person at the counter at Planet Ink advised me not to, so I went ahead and got my conch with a barbell instead. Unfortunately, it was more expensive to get it done with a barbell, and I personally don't care for barbells. But I figured that once the piercing was healed, I could just buy a ring to put in anyways.
The next full week was a pain in the butt because as you probably already know, piercings hurt to sleep on. Anyways, for the first two weeks I cleaned my piercing with the healing solution I bought at Planet Ink twice sometimes three times per day. What I usually did was used Q-tips to clean it. After that I cleaned it once a day, or every second day. After a month of having it I pretty much stopped cleaning it.
After about a month and a half, I noticed that it was starting to get a small bump behind it. It wasn't a big bump or anything, but it wasn't there before my piercing. The bump was probably a small keloid forming. I was really worried so I went back to Planet Ink a week or so later. My piercer said it was fine, and that it looked like it was healing okay. He said that the bump should go away, and it might take 6 months for it to heal. I also didn't think it was necessary to go to the doctors to get it checked.
I also bought a ring to put in it, I bought it a bit big so it would be loose so I wouldn't hurt. Since my piercing was not fully healed it did hurt a bit to have in.
Fast forward another month, the piercing was almost fully healed, the bump was still a bit there and sometimes the piercing hurt a bit.
So I started cleaning it again. That didn't seem to do much.
A week later, my grandparents were over (they don't know about any of my piercings, and I try to keep it that way), so I took my piercing out, and put in a clear, 14g retainer. The retainer was a straight barbell, that was actually ment for tongue piercings. (I had it because it was my boyfriends, he only used it once. I also cleaned it before I used it, haha.) I wore the retainer for a day or two, and after I noticed that my piercing stopped hurting completely.
The bump (or keloid) was completely gone too. I don't know exactly what happened, but I'm 99.9% sure that having the 14g plastic retainer helped it heal.
So just a head's up to those whose piercings are taking a long time to heal, try a plastic retainer. It worked for me, maybe it might work for someone else but then again it might not. This is just something that worked for me, it doesn't mean it will work for others.
It's been almost 5 months since I've had my conch pierced and I plan on keeping it for a very very long time :)