At A Glance
Author	lyzzito
When	Two years ago
Artist	Jesika; Brittany
Studio	Saint Sabrina's; Ink Slingers
Location	St. Paul, MN; Waterford, MI

The spring of my freshman year of college, I got my left nostril pierced. I went to Saint Sabrina's in Minneapolis and it was a fantastic experience overall. My piercer, Jesika, was awesome and the piercing process itself didn't really hurt much. I ended up with a gold nose screw (I'm more of a silver person) because it was the only screw they had in stock, but even so I thought I looked pretty damn good. I took super good care of the piercing afterwards, doing the sea soaks and everything (despite the awkwardness of having to stick my nose in a cup). For the first month or so, my bestudded nose appeared to be doing fine.

Then, a couple weeks after I'd been home for the summer, the piercing started acting up. I noticed a little more lymph fluid than normal, and over the next few days a squishy little bump began forming at the piercing site. It didn't particularly hurt, but it looked gross, and it bled if I touched it too much. I freaked out and worried it was infected, so I started doing more sea salt soaks (which made it worse) and eventually went to see a doctor at the advice of my parents. This was my first big mistake. Doctors are great but they don't know much about piercing care. I was told to put bacitracin gel on the area for 10 days, and if there wasn't a significant improvement by then I should remove the jewelry. So of course, after smothering the poor piercing with that stuff for 10 days, it didn't look any better, and I had to give up on it.

A few months later I decided to try again, determined to do things right this time. I didn't know of any good piercing places in my hometown area, but a friend told me to try Ink Slingers, and that's where I ended up going. It was sterile and legit and everything, and my piercer was really nice, but it turned out to have been a bad choice, as I'll later explain.

About a month into this second piercing, I started getting the same squishy bump as before. But this time I decided to do some research before I jumped to any dire conclusions. After some internet exploring I found out that my squishy bump was *not* any indication of infection, or even any major cause for alarm. It was merely a lump of scar tissue, called a granuloma, and it's not anything that necessitates jewelry removal. Apparently granulomas happen often with cartilage piercings, and it means your body's simply working overtime in the scarring department. They go away eventually and the best thing you can do to speed the process up is apply warm compresses. I've heard also that hydrocortisone cream helps heal granulomas, but I tried that and it didn't do anything. And in general it's best not to put anything like that on a piercing, since it prevents the piercing from breathing. You certainly shouldn't slather antibacterial gel on it like I did.

Anyways, once I found out what the lump was, I chilled out and let the granuloma run its course. I tried to apply a warm compress twice every day – I soaked some paper towels in hot water and held it to my nose for about 15 minutes. It wasn't a very good method because the paper towels got cool pretty quickly; it's also best to use sea salt water but I was lazy so I just used tap water.

After a few weeks, the granuloma was still there, and I wondered if maybe I needed jewelry with a less reactive metal, like titanium or niobium (I had surgical stainless steel at the time). At this point I was back at school in the Twin Cities, so I went to Saint Sabrina's to have someone look at my nose and maybe get some new jewelry. My piercer (Derek, I think) confirmed that it was indeed a granuloma, but he also discovered that my last piercer (the Ink Slingers girl) had done a crappy job. He identified three problems with my piercing:

1. the stud post was WAY too short (at places like St. Sabrina's, they use long posts and size it according to each individual, also accounting for swelling; all the nose screws at Ink Slingers were pre-bent)
2. the end of the stud was curved in the direction it should be for a right nostril, and my piercing was in my left (again, those fabulous pre-bent studs)
3. the piercing was done at kind of a weird angle

The length of the stud was the main troublemaker. It was so short that it was basically choking the hole. So short, in fact, that my piercer couldn't even take it out by hand – he had to pull it out with pliers. And yes, that was as painful as it sounds. The stud did not surrender easily, and it took a few minutes for the guy to get it out, but it felt like forever. Seriously, one of the worst pains I've ever experienced in my life. It was this intense constant burning in my nose and it actually made me nauseous. I also started sweating bullets and my t-shirt was soaked by the time he finally removed the damn stud. I'm pretty good at handling pain, but this was very near unbearable.

After all that unpleasantness, my piercer fitted me with a lovely new green stainless steel stud. This one, of course, was a much much better size. The granuloma cleared up after a while – I can't remember how long, maybe a couple weeks. Since then, my nose piercing has not had another problem. It was definitely worth all the time and money I'd spent on it, but I really wish I hadn't had to.

So take it from me, kids, DON'T get your nose pierced at a place that doesn't custom-fit studs! Everyone's nose is different, and everyone will have different levels of swelling, so getting pierced with a pre-bent stud is just careless. You really really don't want to have to go through the pliers experience like I did. Pick your piercers wisely.

It's also best to go to a reliable piercer if you've got a piercing-related problem. That's certainly one thing I learned. Looking back on the whole ordeal, the St. Sabrinas guy was the only person who did anything right. If only I'd seen a piercer when I got the first granuloma!