At A Glance
Author	der_narr
Contact	der_narr@bme.anon
IAM	der_narr
When	It just happened
Artist	Piercing by Toby, stretching by self
Studio	Wildcat + @home
Location	Essen / Duisburg, germany

Dear reader, this experience is about piercing and stretching my Septum up to 8g

PIERCING AT 1.6mm

Well, as my second piercing I selected my septum to be pierced in 2002. I had planned on piercing it before my winter holidays, but my piercer told me to wait until I was back from my holidays. So in February 2002 I went to Wildcat in Essen – Germany to visit Toby, the piercer I had learned to trust.

When I came to the shop I went to the counter and asked whether Toby was in, they confirmed that he was there and then asked me what I was getting pierced. I opted for my Septum, filled out the necessary paperwork and paid my 60€ (about 70 US-$), which is their policy, that you pay before getting pierced.

I then went down into the basement of the store where the "piercing clinic" is located. There I had to wait for some minutes as there were other customers in front of me. But when it was my time Toby generously greeted me and asked me to come into his room.

Entering I became somehow nervous as I had been told that Septums often hurt like a bit*h. Toby talked to me for a while and prepared his tools, then asked me if I wanted a bar or a ring for the beginning – I went for the ring as my plan was to wear a circular barbell afterwards.

When Toby had prepped everything he inspected my nose and told me it was perfect to pierce it with a septum. He shoved some q-tips up my nose, which had some cleaning solution on them so my septum was disinfected. Then he took his marker and decided where the needle should later go through – quite forward and in the middle of my "sweet spot".

Then he opened the 1.7mm needle right in front of my eyes and asked me to keep my head straight up and look forward and NOT to move. I then felt a cold sting as the needle was shoved through my nose, but I was instantly happy that I had not experienced that intense pain others had talked about. Then Toby removed the needle, resting the teflon tube in my nose, then inserting a 1.6x12mm ball closure ring. Then I was ready to go, but before Toby offered me some coke to restore myself.

After that we went through aftercare and I happily left the studio. Healing was quite easy afterwards, I simply cleaned my nose with q-tips I had before soaked in Octenisept®. After I would say 8 weeks there were hardly any more crusties and so healing time was over.

Stretching to 2mm

Stretching my Septum to 2mm was quite easy, as my girlfriend just shoved a 2mm ball closure ring through the hole. This hurt quite bad but I stood the pain and so my septum was stretched for the first time.

Stretching to 2,4mm

This stretch was way harder, as under no circumstances the 2.4mm circular barbell would fit into the hole. So I had to use a taper to widen the hole. I pushed it in from both sides until I could no longer manage the pain, then picked up my 2,4mm ring and shoved it easily through the hole.

This time I had some hard pain in my upper mouth region, and chewing was really painful for the first days, but this after like seven days went by and my septum was at a beautiful 10g.

Stretching to 3.2mm

This stretch was indeed the hardest so far. I had bought a taper for stretching my ampallang to 3.2mm before, so this time I had perfect tools to stretch my septum. I lubed up the taper and slowly slid it into my septum until the pain became very intense, then paused for a moment. This I repeated until the taper was almost all the way through. I then picked my 3.2mm septum keeper, and following the taper inserted it into my septum.

This hurt !!!

For almost two weeks I again had crusties and some quite big swelling of my upper lip and nose, but now, my septum looks pretty nice.

Thanks for reading my experience :-)

Alex P:S.: Another fact about septums is that they smell quite bad from time to time. And the bigger your septum gets, the worse the smell becomes. But I found out that - to prevent this odor from getting too bad - you can use Octenisept to clean off the cells etc that are stuck to the ring, so that then the odor is fought back and you can again enjoy breathing through your nose. What is funny about wearing tunnels in your septum is, that you can actually breathe through your third nostril as I sometimes call it.