My septum piercing is my first very visible piercing and has since become my favorite.
At A Glance Author Paul Contact Paul@bme.anon Artist Unknown Location Ames IA The cost was $25 and I was given the option of having a retainer or a circular barbell as the initial jewelry. I chose the barbell thinking that the retainer would be harder to keep clean during healing.
I asked some questions first about the placement. I have read a couple of experiences or horror stories where the placement was through the cartilage. This sounded very painful and very undesirable to me. I've also seen pictures of septums that are too far forward in the nose and don't look as appealing. The piercer told me that the placement would be right between the fleshy tissue and the cartilage and in the middle of the nose depth-wise, right where I was hoping/expecting it to be placed.
The piercing itself wasn't painless of course but was the least painful out of all of mine so far (I also have my tongue, nipples done twice and a prince albert done). The piercer disinfected the area, marked both sides and lined a receiving tube up. Then the needle was put through quickly. It made my eyes water but it didn't hurt that bad afterward. It was a bit crooked but my piercer assured me that it would straighten during the healing process. I began to twist the ring rather than just tugging it down to try to correct the problem.
The healing was also very quick. I found that the appearance of "crusties" only lasted about a week. The healing period was very low maintenance, I just soaked it in a sea salt water solution once or twice a day and rinsed. I was surprised that the piercing didn't produce any blood whatsoever, a first for me.
I had a brief cold during the first week, which didn't interfere with things much at all. Q-tips proved to be helpful with keeping the area clean.
I'm a fan of stretching and I'm impatient so I tried to fit a 12 gauge ring in a week after the piercing and I found much to my surprise that it slid in easily. A couple of days later, I picked up an 8 gauge circular barbell while making a trip to the shop and was hoping to fit it in as soon as I could. I tried gently to get the 8 in a couple of days later and found that it would take longer than before to fit it. I discovered during this that my hole was beginning to close up a little bit after a couple of minutes. I made a couple of quick attempts to get the 8 in and I finally put it through after a sneezing fit. It burned quite a bit during the process and a couple of hours after. It would have been easier to have a 10 gauge for the stretching process but I thought that 8 was the size that I wanted to end up at and I wanted to save a little money not having to pick up a ring that I would use only temporarily.
I like the look of the bigger ring and the piercing itself. Because of my employment plans after graduation, I can't have any visible modifications. It's easy to do but a bit uncomfortable to remove the balls and flip the ring up into my nose so I plan on investing in an acrylic retainer plug eventually. The septum piercing was particularly appealing to me because while it carries a fair amount of shock value, it is virtually invisible while hidden. I like the way the 8 gauge looks and I'm not going to go any bigger. My girlfriend initially was against me having my septum done and loosely gave me permission to go ahead with it. She liked the way it looked however and also thinks the bigger size looks even better.
Also, I found that during the healing, it has in fact straightened out completely. I was a bit worried about that at first because I heard from some that the only solution is to let it heal and repierce and heard from others that it would fix itself.
That's my story. I recommend that if it is a bit off at first to let it heal and see if it straightens up before deciding to have it redone. I also recommend this piercing highly to those who have employment-restricted options but remember that the degree to which and the gauge that you will be able to hide depends on the shape of your nose. This is a nice piercing because even if you decide to remove it down the road, the scar will be completely hidden away.
P