For as long as I can remember I have always wanted a cartilage piercing. However, I just so happened to live with a mother who refused to allow me to get any piercings other than one on each ear lobe until after I was 18, and a father who was even stricter. One day my cousin, who happens to be two year younger than me, came to visit us and I discovered she had recently gotten her cartilage pierced! With my mother still refusing to sign the release papers, there was nothing I could do but to stare at my cousin's decorated ear with longing for three more years.
At A Glance Author anonymous When A year ago Artist my friend's dad Location ventura county When I turned eighteen I did not rush out to pierce my ear as I had once believed I would. It was nearly my nineteenth birthday when I finally got around to it. Many of my friends had pierced their own ears (yes, even their cartilage) so when my best friend's father who is also an oral surgeon said he could bring home some sterile needles and do it for me himself, I figured why not?
About a week later I went over to her house and he had brought home quite a few needles, still in their wrapping, of various gauges. I decided to go with the standard 16 gauge as I already had bought some jewelry to use from a local parlour. Agreeing that the downstairs computer room was the best place to carry out the poking and inserting (who knows why, but at the time it was), I was sat in a swivel chair and in front of the closet mirror so I could still see what was being done. Rather nervous, I was extremely anxious to get the procedure going.
It took ages to determine the placement I wanted. I had to keep comparing it to how my friend's was and what I wanted differently about mine. Also I had difficulty deciding where I wanted it to come out in the back at. I have seen quite a few where the piercing seems to slant upward, causing the jewelry to look as though it is going up, which is extremely distasteful to me. Therefore, I took great care in choosing how it would be done, maybe a tad too much.
Finally, we got to the piercing and inserting the needle was no big deal; people always talk about how they hear a pop or a crunch, but there was no such thing for me. However, the jewelry decided to be difficult and would absolutely not slide in after the needle. Eventually, we had to put the jewelry in backwards because for whatever reason it only slid in without resistance from the back.
Immediately I got up to see how I liked my newfound piercing I had been waiting ages to obtain. It looked absolutely perfect. My ear was rather red due to the stubborn jewelry problems and the trauma of the piercing itself, yet it still looked exactly as I had imagined it.
Now, no one had prepared me for exactly how tender the cartilage is after being pierced. It was nearly impossible for me to sleep on my left side as any slight touch of my ear sent a shooting pain through my ear for the first week or so. My body usually heals very well on its own without any sort of ointments or special care, so I pretty much just left this piercing alone. I would never play with it, or move it, or do anything with it really. It seemed to be healing nicely; there were virtually no "crusties" and nothing wrong with it to think of except for the fact that I could still not sleep on it unless I extremely carefully maneuvered my pillow and such so it cradled my head and thus did not come into contact with the piercing.
About three months after the piercing I noticed there was a bump on the back of my ear. I moved to touch it and it immediately burst, filled with puss. I know, gross, right? So after that I did sea salt soaks; I soaked a cotton pad in warm saline solution and held it on my ear for five to ten minutes a day.
After that I never had any troubles with it, except for the fact that I STILL could not sleep very comfortably on that side of my head. The piercing seemed to now not be causing a shooting pain, but rather an uncomfortable pinching sort of sensation. As I lived my day to day life I came to the realization that nearly everyone around me had their cartilage pierced. And while I did not get the to be "different" by any means, it kind of bothered me that it seemed so mainstream.
Yet the one thing that truly bothered me about everyone having this piercing is that no one talks about how long they take to heal and how difficult it is to sleep on the side of the piercing. I know I seem to be bringing up sleep quite a bit, but sleep is extremely important to me and something preventing comfortable sleep for roughly a year is tough for me. So much so that I retired my piercing I had waited so long to get. My ear is now healed and it is barely even visible that I once had a piercing there. It seems so sad to me that I missed out on so much sleep for something that I ended up getting rid of anyways, but I guess I had to live it to learn it.
Basically, I want to let people know that cartilage piercings take a long time to heal and during that time they are very tender. I have a relatively high threshold of pain, so its not that it is painful so much as very uncomfortable. While others may not have as much of a problem with it as I did, I still wanted to get the word out there. If you think this piercing is for you, then by all means go for it (but you should probably go to a professional piercer rather than your friend's dad), but be aware of the healing process to determine if it really is something for you. Happy piercing!