| At A Glance | |
| Author | Christina |
| Contact | Christina@bme.anon |
| When | A month ago |
| Artist | A friend who does a lot of piercings |
| Studio | Friend's room |
| Location | Madison, WI |
I'd had been waiting to get more ear piercings for a while and I decided to add a rook to my left ear. I finally managed to track down a friend of mine who loves to pierce other people (herself too) on a day we had off of school. I made the mistake of having her do it instead of going to a piercing shop (I'm too cheap, plus she owed me money and this would even us out) because my friend had forgotten to tell me that the only cartilage piercing she ever does is septum, and she never does ears.
Well, after sterilizing everything, she told me she was going to pierce through the bottom first, then the top. I thought, okay, not how they do it normally, but I trust her. She stuck a 16g needle through my ear all the way, confusing me because most rooks don't go through the back of the ear. I told her this, and she responded by saying she wasn't really sure what a rook was, she had only seen pictures. Oh great, I thought, but I didn't really mind because it would still look cool as more of an orbit now and she still handles herself well with needles. She then stuck the needle through the top and through the back. I'm a person who really loves needles (I've done acupuncture a lot and I love getting blood drawn, and I get injections in my back for back pain) so the piercing doesn't bother me at all—though most people say cartilage piercing is the worst.
After the holes were made, she stuck the 14g barbell through the bottom hole and through the back. Okay, easy part done. I had no idea what I was in for next. She tried for about five minutes or so to get the bar into the top hole from the back, but with no luck. After looking at my ear for another minute, she determined that she would have to re-pierce the top hole because it had closed.
*Sigh* Okay, I agreed, and we all enjoyed another quick crunch as she punched the needle through my cartilage. Now that I had a fresh top hole, she tried to put the bar through the top hole again, but now it was getting pretty bloody. It wasn't too bad until a pool of blood began to gather in my ear and run down my neck, which others decided to take pictures of. We cleaned up my ear and tried to continue. She tried to get the bar through the top hole for an entire hour and fifteen minutes. She could get it into the hole, but it was at such an awkward angle and so sticky from the dried blood that whenever she tried to push it through it would twist and push itself deep inside my ear (she was using a curved eyebrow barbell). Surprisingly, that was the only part that hurt at all—and that only hurt every once in a while. Maybe I just have high pain tolerance in my ears.
After almost an hour and a half of sitting in a chair, getting bloody and poked at (did I mention that I can't stand people touching my ears?), I decided that I would try for a bit while she pierced our friends' eyebrows. Whoops, when I tried the bar fell out of the top hole completely.
She hadn't even started the eyebrow piercing when she looked at my ear and asked me if we could just leave the bar going through my ear, and maybe try the top hole again once it healed. I said that would be okay; that ear had enough trauma for one day! So she screwed the ball on the end of bar at the back of my ear and I went off to clean it.
The next day, I couldn't touch my ear at all. The lymph nodes below my ear were so swollen and bruised that it hurt to even move my head too far in either direction; I felt like I had mono again! The top hole of the piercing was looking pretty beat up too. Since she had stuck me twice there and was digging around for such a long time, I had two scabs from the needle, as well as a very large bruise. By large bruise, I mean the entire top half of my cartilage was blue and yellow. Oh my.
Well, I decided that I still really liked the way that it looked and I wanted to keep it. I kept it extremely clean (I have no immune system and get infected really easily) and tried really hard not to irritate it at all for the next week and it got a lot better. The bruising disappeared after the week and my lymph nodes calmed down after two to three days.
It's been about six weeks now, and my piercing is doing completely fine. I don't think I'm going to have her try to turn it back into a more normal rook, coming back through the front, because I think this looks pretty neat. (: Even though it was a completely terrible way to get a messed-up piercing done, I'm happy that it at least turned out okay. At least it hasn't gotten infected (that's one of the best things about needle piercing)! Advice for others: get it done professionally and don't be a cheapskate like me, or at least make sure you have someone who knows how to do it!! (: