I thought it was an innocent thing. Getting my ears pierced was something i wanted to do since I was in first grade. I was able to finally convince my mom to take me to pierce my ears at the end of my freshman year of high school. So i went out and bought some earrings, which I didn't know at the time were an eight gauge. I had no idea what gauges were which. I didn't even know you could stretch your ears.
At A Glance Author David Contact dahveedxoverdose@yahoo.com When Five years ago Artist Me, Miro, and Paul Studio Dandyland Location San Antonio, Texas So me and my mom went to a piercing shop not far away from her work, and I went in and told them I wanted my ears pierced. The guy looked at me and said, "Do you know how big this is?" I replied with a with a simple "No. What do you mean?" He said, "This is an eight gauge, yet you don't even have your ears pierced yet. Now i can do this procedure, but it'll hurt a lot more than a standard piercing." I contemplated this, as I was completely new to modification and had no idea what kind of pain to expect. But in the end, I decided to go ahead with it.
He took me to the piercing room, sat me down, and got all the supplies ready and such. After much anticipation and fear, it finally came down to the moment of truth, for one ear at least. He told me to just keep breathing as the needle went in. I did just as he asked, my face clenching in pain from the enormous needle going into my lobe. What an experience! I thought it would be way worse. But then I remembered I had the other ear that needed to be pierced. I followed the same steps for the other ear, and before I knew it, I had my ears pierced.
My first step in stretching happened around winter of that same year. My friend handed me a pair of four gauge plugs. Curious as to how I would look with these, I stuffed them in my ear, with no lube mind you. Oh my god! It hurt really bad, and my ears were swollen and red, but this new look in my ears gave me a sort of satisfaction. But I still had no idea i was going any farther.
The months passed by. By summer i was at a two gauge, the next winter i was at a zero, the following summer i was at a double zero, and it wasn't until a buddy of mine visited me at drumline practice one day. His ears were already at three fourths of an inch, and I flipped out on it! I had never seen earlobes that big before. He gave me a pair of seven sixteenths eyelets, a pair of half inch eyelets, and a pair of five eighths plugs. So i continued my journey up.
Unfortunately I had hit a bump in my stretching as i went to five eighths. I had bought tapers for the five eighths, and while the left ear went in fine, my right ear had hurt horribly. It had never hurt this bad stretching before. I went by to a place called Dandyland, who had been mentioned in the local paper as the best piercing studio in my city almost 10 years in a row. I went down there and asked them about this. It turns out I had a "blowout" in my right ear. Needless to say i kept stretching.
About two months later, I went to another studio to get them stretched to three fourths of an inch. Big mistake, because they had now blown out my left ear. I now had two blown out earlobes. But this didn't prevent me from stretching. About another month later, I bought some thirteen sixteenths, which were sold to me as seven eighths by a store at the mall. To my surprise they slipped right in, but my blowouts had got worse. Then finally, I moved on to my goal. An inch.
This inch procedure was done by another piercing studio, who shall remain nameless. I think it was their duty to tell me that it was really dangerous for me to go from my current size at the time to an inch. Unfortunately this was not the case, they continued as normal. I sat in their piercing room, awaiting the pain that was about to be bestowed on me. She set up her supplies, and lubed up my ears and the taper, and got to work. This stretch was by far the worst stretch ever, and she had to somewhat force the taper through. I knew this was gonna be a nasty procedure. My right ear bled as she put in the eyelet. She cleaned up that mess, and started on my left ear. My left ear of course was way tighter than my right ear, but she didn't seem to notice until the taper was even harder to put in. It turns out she ripped my earlobe! Luckily she didn't rip it from the bottom, but from the top instead. My ear was bleeding for like ten minutes at most. She put the jewelry in though, and gave me sea salt to take care of it.
I sought information on how to get rid of these blowouts. I figured I better go back to Dandyland. Miro and Paul advised me to use vitamin E oil to take care of it. With that advice i bought some excellent quality eyelets from them. This aided in my healing process as the wearing size was large and allowed for my thick earlobes to heal properly.
Now I'm way smarter as far as stretching goes. I've learned to take my time and that its worth the wait! I'm currently at an inch and an eighth, and I plan to go to an inch and a half. Miro and Paul have helped me since this incident, and I plan to come back to them for jewelry choices and stretching processes.