| At A Glance | |
| Author | San |
| Contact | San@bme.anon |
| IAM | BlueStar |
| When | A month ago |
| Artist | Mike |
| Studio | Anchor's Tattoo |
| Location | Burlington, ON Canada |
My attempts at stretching my septum piercing went well at first until I had an accident horseback riding and had to take all of my piercings out for x-rays. I could never get the damn thing back in so I gave up. The first time I tried to stretch my septum I used an 8ga acrylic taper and tried to shove that through a 14 gauge hole. It didn't work, I was in a lot of pain, the taper didn't go all the way through, and mind you, I was stretching through the cartilage. After that, I eventually waited and went up gradually, 12 gauge, 10 gauge and finally 8 gauge. I didn't use tapers to stretch, I waited and eventually got my septum piercing to 4 gauge and that's when the accident happened and I lost my piercing. It shrunk to about 8 gauge and I wore jewellery in it once in a while, but I wanted it bigger, and didn't want to have to go through the stretching process again, so that's when dermal punching it came to mind.
I asked Mike if he wanted to dermal punch it at 0 gauge for me and he said he definitely did. I knew he would. I had a spare 0 gauge single flared tunnel lying around. I ordered 8mm punches from Bodyartpro and waited for a good weekend to go to Burlington to get it done. It had to be a weekend where I had no homework and actually had some extra cash. Finally, I had a good weekend. I never bothered to take into the fact that it was Canada, winter, cold: nose. This comes into affect later.
Chris and I met up with Mike at Anchor's and I gave him the dermal punches and we did the happy dance and Mike autoclaved the jewellery. During this time we had a cigarette, I went to the bank and I got something to drink. I had messaged Mike before with two words: "Blood bath".
I didn't know how right I was.
I was wearing a pair of jeans and a red hoody over a red and black striped sweater. I decided to take off the red hoody and if I bled through the bib, at least it wouldn't be all over my expensive college shirt that I liked to wear all the time because it was so warm.
Mike set up. He got out the dermal punch, a scalpel, q-tips, cleaning solutions and more. He had his certificate in blood borne pathogens on the wall saying he was up to date in his ceritification. He changed his gloves regularly and wore a mask as well. I knew I was in good hands because I've been getting pierced, scalpelled and punched by him for years.
The first thing Mike did was put a bib on me for the blood. He laughed at the message I had sent him saying "blood bath" and Chris set up his camera while we did that. He said the best part about this was after it was all done, nobody would know we had done anything. Chris said I needed to get some cool jewellery for it.
Mike changed his gloves and cleaned out my nose and told me not to sneeze. I obliged. There was no real marking, there wasn't a point. He got out a cork, which didn't work because I have small nostrils. After cutting it in half, and placing it up my right nostril, we got it in place and were ready to go. It seemed so fast since there wasn't really much of a procedure. Just clean and go. I knew my eyes were going to water, so I closed them. I was breathing through my mouth, since one nostril was clogged and the other would be shortly.
Mike positioned the dermal punch and told me to take a deep breath in. I was thinking "Oh fuck", and I took a deep breath in, and then Mike told me to take a deep breath out, so I did and I felt him push the punch with a lot of force into the cork on the other side. I felt it go through the skin, and then a layer of cartilage, and then another layer of cartilage, and then the skin on the other side. It was done. I felt blood dripping down my right nostril, down my face and onto the bib.
Chris laughed and so did Mike. I was slightly less enthused. Mike made sure I was okay. He cut away the tiny piece of skin holding the tissue in place still and removed the dermal punch, ran the taper through, which was very cold and inserted the jewellery. The hardest part was putting the o-ring on. During this I got very bloody. There was blood all over the bib, all over my face and a bit on my jeans, as I was sitting up during the procedure, but not much. My blood bath message was right.
I looked in the mirror at my bloody face and grinned. Chris took a couple of pictures and Mike cleaned me up making sure I was still okay, because it was such an intense procedure. He gave me a mirror and I could see the ends of the tunnel (single flared) and it was true, you could hardly tell anything had happened.
The next little bit was painful. It felt like someone had beat the shit out of me. The punch took a lot of energy out of me and I felt like someone had hit me in the nose, hard. There was no bleeding after the initial punch. As for cleaning, I would do hot salt water soaks. It turned out great. Other than my nose hurting like hell in the cold, its healing fine so far. I love it. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.
