When i got my anti-tragus pierced, it did hurt. It wasn't the most painful piercing i've had, and it wasn't as bad as i expected it to be, but it definately hurt. But really, pain is relative (a lot of people think i'm lying when i tell them my most painful piercing was the cartilage at the top of my ear, when it's completely true, so it shows it's different with each person), so don't let that put you off.
At A Glance Author Louisaism Contact Louisaism@bme.anon When Six months ago Artist Jon Studio Bodyworks Location Stanford-Le-Hope, Essex The week after, it stayed quite red and sore. Pretty much any facial movement gave me a nasty twinge in the whole bottom part of my ear. It wasn't horribly painful though, just enough to make me wince. I also couldn't lay on that side for about two weeks or so, and touching it, even lightly, hurt too.
After about a month, it got infected. It wasn't too bad to deal with and it was completely my fault that I got it, as I was constantly touching it and playing with the jewellery with unclean hands. Don't do this, really! I learnt that afterwards.
The infection cleared after about a week, I just kept cleaning it with sea salt solution twice a day and it went. But I was left with a big bump there still, just next to the piercing hole on the inside of my ear (I thought this was just part of the infection but later realised it wasn't).
I had no idea what this bump was. I asked some people I knew and they all said it was a keloid. This worried me a lot because i'd heard that you can't get rid of keloids without medical help, and even then it's hard. I decided to search the internet and found out that it wasn't a keloid, by comparing stories and pictures. Keloids are pretty rare - my bump was hypertrophic scarring. If you type hypertrophic scarring into the bme (or other) search engine, you should find some examples of what these look like, though they might look a bit worse than what I got.
I'd had this bump (or hypertrophic scar) for about a month, and it had got quite a bit bigger. I pushed down on it to see if it was hard or squishy, and somehow it burst. There was lots of blood, but no pus or anything. The next day the bump was still there, but it had shrunk. I think it might've had a lot of blood in it and when that was released it got smaller, i'm not sure at all to be completely honest. Don't do this though, I didn't mean to and it's not a good thing that I did, even if the bump had got a bit smaller.
Thanks to some friendly people on a chat site, I found out how I should get rid of the bump - massage a mixture of 1 part tea tree oil to 2 parts olive oil/lavender oil into it. I found it much more effective to soak a cotton ball in the mixture and sleep with it in my ear at night. The bump shrunk a lot in just a week. I kept doing this for a while and it kept it looking better.
During this time, I got another scar on the front side of the piercing, but much smaller. I think it was because I had a ring, and sometimes the ring got knocked backwards and mucked up the hole. I've been trying to get this one to go, but i've had no success, not even up to the time i'm writing this. Anyway, I changed my piercer, and found out that the jewellery I had in it was too small and wasn't right for the healing time. I got it changed to a PTFE bar and it is so much more comfortable, it's healing better and the hypertrophic scar on the inner side has improved a lot. It's still there but it's more like a slightly raised circle and it's unnoticable unless you're looking for it.
The scars have gotten worse and then better, depending on things like being kicked in the ear by my sister, being hit on the ear by some small child, taking a very fast turn on a rollercoaster and having my head slammed into the side of the seat, etc :p
Basically, this hasn't been an easy piercing for me. After 6 months, it's nowhere near being healed, and it can still hurt sometimes. It can take up to a year to heal anyway, but I know that mine has been troublesome. But piercings are different for each person. If you're thinking of getting an anti-tragus piercing, don't be put off, just try not to touch it unless you're cleaning it, don't fiddle with the jewellery, clean it a couple of times a day with sea salt solution and stay away from young children who want to hurt you.