I'll start off by saying that this experience actually happened 2 weeks ago, but there's not an option for that, and one month is just too far away from 2 weeks to choose that one.
At A Glance Author Cory Contact Cory@bme.anon IAM Corky When A week ago Artist Anonymous Location SoCal, California I've always had terrible luck when it comes to healing cartilage piercings. And I mean terrible. My 14g conch, vertical industrial, multiple helixes, standard industrials, and rook have all keloided pretty bad, and I've had to take them all out. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn't cut out to have any piercings that went through cartilage.
Then, about a year ago, I learned of dermal punching. I had always seen it (a couple people at the shop I frequent had their conches punched), but never really thought about it very much... I probably just assumed that they had stretched them or something. I heard that dermal punching, due to the tissue removal, actually makes healing cartilage piercings a lot easier.
I wasn't quite ready to actually remove a piece of each ear, though, so I put it on the back burner, and kept trying to heal all sorts of cartilage piercings - to no avail. They all either got super nasty or keloided, and they all came out shortly after they were pierced, due to these complications. So, about a month ago, I told my piercer that I wanted to have my conchs and flats punched. She said that she'd never actually punched any, but was quite confident that she could do it successfully, having witnessed some, and talking to other piercers who do them regularly. I'm the shop guinea pig (seriously), so the fact that she hadn't done them before didn't phase me TOO much. After all, I wouldn't have asked her to do it if I didn't think she could do it successfully, right? We decided we'd do my conchs first, punching them at 6mm and then stretching them to 8mm (to keep the residual bleeding to a minimum).
So, for the next two weeks, I talked to other piercers I know about what I should be looking for, any advice I could give her (I don't know if she knows I went behind her back or not), etc., and those that knew her said that she could definitely pull it off problem-free, which was very re-assuring. Those two weeks (waiting for the punches to arrive) felt very long. I was filled with a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and fear - punches scare me. The though of removing a section of cartilage from my ear just sounded extremely painful.
When the punches finally arrived, I spent the morning preparing. It was almost the same preparation I did for my first pull. Focus on the breathing, clear the mind, find "the place". I was extremely calm and not worried about anything until I got to the shop. She walked in, and showed me the punches. That got my nerves going - the looked huge. And, they didn't look as sharp as needles (though I knew that they were, in fact, at least as sharp, if not sharper). We had to wait until there was a small break in the customers, since we didn't know how long it would take, and we didn't really want anyone waiting for a piercing to see the decent amount of blood that was sure to ensue. The wait just allowed my nerves to wreak havoc on my mind. I watched a girl my age go in for a 14g conch piercing, and she appeared to be writhing with pain during the procedure. I have had my conch done at 14g twice, and know that it sucks, so that just made me even more nervous.
Finally, I was up. I didn't feel entirely ready for the terrible pain that I had convinced myself it would be, but it was now or never, pretty much. When we got into the piercing room, I tried to calm myself down and focus on my breathing again. It helped a little bit, but she could tell that I was still nervous. She admitted that she was nervous as well, which, for some strange reason, actually made me feel a little better about the whole thing. She marked one ear first, and managed to get the mark right on the first try. I was kind of impressed (I'm rather picky about placement). She duplicated the mark on the other ear, and took out the flashlight to check for veins in my ears... We were in the clear and ready to go.
I made the mistake of watching her open up the punches and prepare a tongue depressor wrapped with gauze (instead of a cork). Then, out came the massive amounts of q-tips and gauze, for the bleeding. At this point, my heart was racing. I had convinced myself that these would be the most painful piercings I would ever experience, and had even come up with an excuse to not do the other ear if this first one was too bad. She placed a sterile field with a hole cut out for my ear over my head, and informed me that this was to keep the blood of of my clothing and the rest of my face. My grip on the chair tightened to more of a death grip, and the shop owner came in to give me some shit about how I looked like I was preparing for death. At this point, the majority of the shop had heard about what was going to happen, and they formed a crowd around the piercing room, making both of us more nervous than we were to begin with.
She told me to focus on my breathing, and I did. Deep breaths in through my nose, and out through my mouth. I did this for quite a while, each time expecting the punch to go through. About 10 breaths in, I felt her hand move in such a way that I knew the punch would go through on my next breath. I don't know if this helped or not. So I took a huge breath in, held it for one second, and started to let it out. As soon as I started to exhale, she pushed the punch through. I was very confused. I thought it was going to hurt. It was very anti-climactic, and I felt like a pussy. I had prepared myself for this intense, searing pain, and, aside from a louder than usual "pop" when the punch met cartilage, it was a relatively painless piercing.
As soon as the punch was through, she stuff a handful of q-tips in my ear to keep the blood from entering my ear canal. It worked. She quickly removed the punch and followed through with the taper, which burned a little bit, but certainly wasn't unbearable. The jewelry followed the taper in seamlessly, and one ear was done.
What a relief.
The second ear was slightly more painful, which is likely due to the endorphin drop from the first one. Also, I was as freaked out about it, so that might have contributed a little, too. Either way, it went quickly, and I took a moment to just sit in the chair and look at my pretty new conchs while she was cleaning up the small amount of blood that had made its way behind my ears and down my neck.
We spent a good amount of time discussing aftercare and what I could expect during the healing process. Everything seemed good, the bleeding had stopped, so she took one last look at them, and I headed home for dinner. That evening, I had to drive back up to LA for the week, so I made sure I had all my sea salt, q-tips, etc. that I would need for at least a week.
On the way back up, my left ear decided that it wasn't terribly happy about having part of it removed, and it bled a decent amount for about 25 minutes. Luckily, I had gauze to soak it up.
The first few days were fairly uneventful, with the occasional blood, but not too much crust. On day 5, one of my other piercer friends told me that any day now I would get the most massive amounts of crust I had ever seen. The next morning I woke up to the most crust I have EVER seen come out of a piercing. It was nasty, and it was all over the sides of my head. I took a shower, but it still took a good 10 minutes of cleaning to get all of it off (and out of my hair). Needless to say, I was late to work that Friday.
A few days later, I noticed that the front side of the plug I had chosen was cutting into my ear from the pressure of the swelling, and had created a nasty looking sore. I ran down to Anomaly (I was still in LA) and they said that my conchs were actually doing fairly well for being less than 2 weeks old, and that I shouldn't really worry or change out the jewelry unless I was pushing back the o-rings (or swelling over them), or if it caused a good amount of discomfort. It did. My piercer already had longer plugs picked up for me, so yesterday, we swapped them out. She also said that my conchs appear to be healing quite well, which was a relief for both of us.
I'm going to give these a few more weeks to heal up, and then we'll move on to my flats... Until then, it's salt soaks and Advil for me.