I admitted to myself a year ago that I desperately wanted to get my tongue pierced. I know it's fast becoming one of the most popular piercings, but my piercings and modifications are all deeply personal to me as an individual. I think them through fully and they become part of "me" as a person.
At A Glance Author Amy Contact Amy@bme.anon When A week ago Artist Mark Studio Pro Pierce Location Birmingham Now I'm sat here with this big chunk of metal through my mouth, but believe me it took me months to get myself into gear to getting this done.
I didn't do it for anyone else, the fact I think it looks cool is minimal because I'm not an owner of a particularly high body image. I just wanted it. It seems a perfect piercing for me, it is discrete, and I need to have discrete piercings because I am training to be a doctor and I am not meant to have piercings. However this hasn't stopped me having my tragus, navel, helix, nose and lobes x4 at 12g and planning my tattoo design.
So I took it upon myself to find out absolutely everything I could about tongue piercings, this involved interrogation of my friends with tongue piercings, actually watching one of them getting it done (and the realisation that pretty much nothing makes me feel queasy anymore. Last week I was inspecting the eye socket of a person with a prosthetic eye as part of my course). I liked the piercing. People spoke highly of it "it's my favourite piercing"; "it's been the easiest to heal by far"; "it's so much fun to have in your mouth".
As part of my course I have studied anatomy and physiology. These are some things I think are relevant to anyone thinking about getting their tongue pierced, whether to dispel any rumours or just to give you some information. These are things that I have found, and what you do, or are advised to do is entirely up to you. I've put this information as succinctly as I can, it is pretty complicated, but it's what I considered before I managed to get pierced.
• Saliva is one of the body's best healing mediums. It is a mixture of water, sodium ions, hydrogen carbonate ions, calcium ions and immunoglobulins (wonderful little proteins that form part of your immune system). Many of you have been advised (and good advice it is too!) to bathe your fresh piercings in saline (NaCl) solution. Well, a tongue piercing is in fact being bathed in your body's own, perfectly isotonic saline solution constantly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use saline, but the natural medium the tongue is in is very sterile.
• The tongue is the body's only muscle with one attachment and no insertion. It is anatomically several muscles (genioglossus, hyoglassus, styloglossus and palatoglossus) which make it so labile and allows you to speak, eat etc. The muscle pierced is genioglossus which is the bulk of the tongue. Because of it being a muscle it has an excellent vascular supply of arteries and veins so all the body's nutrients that are dissolved in the blood are rapidly supplied to the piercing, therefore the healing is rapid. Ever noticed how long it takes any form of cartilage piercing to heal? Cartilage has a very poor vascular supply. (This is also why tendon injuries have such long healing times, yet a cut to the skin is healed within a week or so.)
• The nerve supply of the tongue (the lingual nerve) is located at the back of the tongue (see where all the big bumpy taste buds are) very few nervous fibres run to the tip of the tongue, and the ones that do are located more towards the sides of the tongue.
• The deep lingual and arteries and veins of the tongue are not located centrally. They run parallel with the frenulum of the tongue about half a cm away from the midline. When the tongue is clamped in the piercing procedure the veins are squashed out with the tongue muscle. For a piercer to hit a vein, nerve or artery they must be piercing it pretty badly. However, everyone's body is different and vessels may run in this course, say, 99% of the time, but that means in1% the vessels may be located differently. I'd personally expect a piercer to inspect the area thoroughly before carrying out the procedure.
• The mouth contains a certain amount of bacteria naturally. These bacteria are classified as "good bacteria". Strong mouthwashes (such as Listerine) with alcohol in kill these bacteria and though making your mouth a delightfully sterile environment, do cause a condition referred to among those pierced as "furry tongue". Mmm. Its not going to kill you, but it's unsightly (just like keloids – the bane of my life). I still do not under stand why some piercers recommend using Listerine. I know it's easily available and that some people might not follow any kind of cleaning regime, but really it is too harsh, even diluted right down.
I feel I should talk about the procedure and healing here. I'm afraid this may seem drawn out and I haven't even got to the process, but really, I'm hoping this might help people out there.
Where I live there are several piercing places, being a big city. I had to plan the day I was going to get pierced since my course requires me to speak a lot, and I didn't fancy having to grunt and mumble my way through talking to patients and incredibly scary professors. So I picked the day after my placement finished, knowing I had 2 weeks until my next placement. I enlisted the company of one of my best friends who had decided he wanted his lip pierced. So together we went into the city, stuffing ourselves with donuts and sandwiches on the way to get our blood glucose levels up (and since I guess I wouldn't be eating a big meal for dinner!). We assessed where we thought was good, I'd had experience at most of the places, some good, some bad. We ended up choosing pro pierce since the piercers seemed friendly, the area was as clean as any of the others, plus they didn't seem annoyed when I decided to take it upon myself to interrogate them on everything I could possibly thi nk of. In fact they seemed very interested. They had in the past given me advice on one of my piercings (that had not been done there) and the advice had seemed sensible and worked.
It's a big deal for me you see. I'm quite happy to let most people stick needles through my ears, nose and navel, but when it came to my tongue, I felt wary.
I questioned them on the procedure. I was to be pierced with a 14g needle, the bar was 22mm long to accommodate swelling, the piercing would be from the bottom up – which seemed so much more sensible to me, the piercing I witnessed was top down.
Then came the question of anaesthesia, and I do have something important to say here.
I have never had a piercing with anaesthesia except my tragus. In Birmingham all of the piercing places offer local anaesthesia, this is very different to where I come from originally, where they do not.
My point on anaesthesia:
• A local anaesthetic such as xylocaine, is a mixture of local anaesthetic and a vascoconstrictor (epinephrine) which prevents the spread of the anaesthetic compound into the systemic blood supply. Basically, this is a safety measure since you really don't want to be getting anaesthetic into your heart or brain. Because of this action, when applied on the surface of the tongue (or wherever) it causes the tissue to contract slightly, bunching it up. The effect of this when piercing is that the needle will cause more tissue damage than without the anaesthetic. More tissue damage = longer healing time.
The pro of having an anaesthetic is that it will hurt less in the short term, and will put a nervous person at ease more.
Well, I can honestly say I was nervous. But I had thought this through. I know I don't have the pain threshold of a ninja warrior, but I chose not to have anaesthetic. So I signed the papers and went into the piercing area. I swilled round my mouth with water (no point in using mouth wash really, I just wanted to get rid of any remnants of food). The piercer marked my tongue up and examined it. He marked a spot on my tongue to mark the centre after drying it off with a sterile swab. Then the clamps went on. This really isn't bad. 3 years of orthodontic treatment has probably dulled my awareness of anything big and metal being stuffed in my mouth.
He told me to close my eye. I did. I had no intention of viewing this. I made my friend Joe hold my hand. I felt pressure and a stabbing sensation and the needle was through. Then I felt something cold and metal being slid through (the barbell) then he carefully screwed the ball on which was uncomfortable only because it felt like I'd had my tongue stuck out for so long.
Then it was over. I washed my mouth out about 5 times with water. There was a tiny spot of blood but that was it. My tongue felt immensely heavy and the bar felt enormous.
I held Joe's hand while he got his lip done. Then said our goodbyes and went down to the nearest pub where I sat and ate ice cubes and drank iced water for the next 30 minutes.
The swelling took 2 days to arrive, and with it came a slight lisp. I talked just fine for the first 48 hours. Eating however was impossible. So I gave up on that and settled with soup for the first 3 days. Then I got my act together and manage to eat chicken, mashed potato and mushrooms. Basically, I couldn't eat anything sticky as it got stuck round the bar. I also couldn't eat acidic food. Orange juice – owch!
The best thing I have found is drinking lots and lots of iced water. When you get dehydrated your tongue swells. So I found drinking iced water almost constantly helped loads! (The downside being I was always running off to the bathroom!) Also I found lip balm the best invention ever, since my lips started getting chapped quickly.
By the 5th day I was starting to get a little lymphatic discharge around the bar after eating. This I cleaned off with a cotton bud dipped in oral B no alcohol mouthwash.
After eating anything I swilled my mouth thoroughly with water first and then _warm_ saline solution (1 tea spoon in a mug of boiled water left to cool. I wish someone had told me warm saline, I tried it with cold saline first and it was so foul!)
On the first couple of days I was taking 400mg of ibuprofen 4 times a day, interspaced with 1g Paracetamol 3 times a day. Ibuprofen belongs to a family of drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (or NSAIDs). I'm not sure if it really helped with the swelling that much since the swelling is the body's response to any form of trauma. I also took arnica pillules which I dissolved on my tongue. Arnica is a homeopathic drug which helps bring out the bruising in damaged tissues. I would recommend this as this combination of drugs really helped take the edge off the pain over the first few days.
But really, it is not unbearable. It is uncomfortable and a little irritating, especially when my speech was disrupted.
As for eating; I could eat solids like chicken, potatoes, mushrooms, fish and vegetables after 48 hours. I recommend nothing sticky like cheese, pizza or chocolate as it gets caught around the bar which is so annoying. You can eat hard things like apples, just cut them up small and take a little at a time. It was horrible for me as I always bolt my food! Eating does take a while, but it is vital that you eat a healthy diet because your body requires vitamins to be able to heal it.
The swelling is still there now on the 7th day, but has begun to subside. In the mornings my tongue feels heavy and aches a little and I have to drink a pint of water before doing anything.
I haven't had any trouble with enamel abrasion yet and this is one of the things I am most concerned about. Next week when the swelling has gone down I'll get the shorter bar fitted as an ill fitting bar is more likely to chip your teeth than a well fitted bar.
I hope you have found this informative. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to IM me on IAM (my username is scorn_pie) or e-mail me.