I've wanted my tongue pierced for some time now, I have a couple of friends who have had it done and liked the way it looked on them, also the relatively quick healing process appealed to me as I have found with my other piercings (nostril, rook, cartilage) that having to wait for months on end to change the jewellery tedious. However, I was scared of my parents reaction and also about the pain...This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get it done though as I am at university and by the time I see my parents it will be totally healed and they won't notice (hopefully).
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When A week ago After enquiring about tongue piercing at my local piercing studio several times and wimping out at the last minute I decided to go alone as I found that having friends with me made me more nervous for some reason. I'm not really sure why and would have thought that it would be the other way round, but I found that being by myself I could get myself into the right frame of mind to actually get it done...
So last Saturday I got up, got dressed and went into town by myself determined that this time I would go through with it and not told myself that I wasn't allowed to go home without it. One of my flat mates spent all morning trying to convince me that it was a bad idea and would look gross but this just made me want it more and I wanted to prove to him that I wasn't joking about wanting it done. Anyway, so I got to the studio and it seemed pretty full so I had to wait around for a while, the woman at the reception tried to make me less nervous by chatting to me whilst I waited but all I could think about was that in about 10 minutes I would have a bar of metal shoved though my tongue...
After what seemed like a very long time the man who was going to be doing my piercing came to get me and led me to a small room upstairs where he asked me to rinse my mouth out with mouthwash stuff. He then marked my tongue and I looked in the mirror to check that it was in the right place, it was, so he started to get the needle ready. By this time I was so nervous that I couldn't stop babbling on about how scared I was. He then clamped my tongue, this didn't hurt at all, I've read storied from others that say this is the worst part but I barely felt it. It was then time for the actual piercing which was over in two seconds and didn't hurt at all! Far, far less than my rook did which was a relief. The bar was then inserted and I went back down to pay. The left of the bar made me feel like had a lisp but apparently I didn't sound any different so I guess this was just me being paranoid.
I wasn't given much advice on aftercare, just that I should buy non-alcoholic mouthwash and rinse with this after eating and to avoid drinking neat spirits...I had researched a lot on the internet though and spoken to friends who had their tongue pierced so I wasn't too worried about this. After walking around town in shock at the fact that I had actually gone through with it, I found some mouthwash that didn't contain alcohol and went home. That night I found it very difficult to eat and the bar felt huge and I found it hard to get to sleep. The next morning I expected it to have swollen up a lot but it wasn't too bad and I found that as long as I kept my tongue level in my mouth eating wasn't too difficult.
Over the last week my tongue swelled only slightly and was bruised around the hole for the first few days. I also found that my tongue went a bit yellowish which looked a bit gross and that I had a yellow lump in front of it which scared me quite a lot but after a few days disappeared. The worst bit I found was that I developed a massive ulcer under the ball on the bottom which was painful but that's gone now...I have been rinsing with the mouthwash compulsively as I am paranoid that something will go wrong but so far so good.
Now a week since the piercing it doesn't hurt at all and my tongue looks completely normal apart from a slight bit of bruising behind the bar which I think is probably just where it rests against my tongue due to the length...Overall I am very, very pleased with my new piercing and can't stop looking at it in the mirror, haha. Am really looking forward to the bar being changed to a shorter one as this will look and feel much better. I would say to anyone who wanted their tongue pierced to go for it! I found that the actual piercing didn't hurt at all and although the first few days were a bit uncomfortable it's only a week on and my tongue feels absolutely fine!