| At A Glance | |
| Author | Jacqueline |
| IAM | Jacqueline |
| When | A month ago |
| Artist | Louise |
| Studio | Manchester Body Piercing |
| Location | Oldham St., Manchester |
Just after the start of 2004, I started to contemplate either a madonna or a medusa piercing. I knew I wanted one more facial piercing, and I already had my septum and right nostril pierced (although I no longer wear jewellery in my septum piercing) as well as my beloved vertical labret. I don't like eyebrows piercings so that was one less choice to make, and didn't think any kind of bridge piercing would suit me. My dimples are entirely in the wrong place for cheek piercings to be suitable, even if I had the guts to go through with them - which I don't! - so eventually I was left with the choice of a medusa or a madonna.
During a trip to Manchester, I popped in to my usual piercing studio (Manchester Body Piercing) to see Louise (known as Lou from now on) for a quick gossip. I asked her for her opinion on a medusa piercing, and she scrutinised me and told me she wasn't sure I'd suit any more facial piercings as I have a "very girlish face". I mentioned the possibility of a madonna, pointing out that Caroline, who is a piercer at the same studio, also has a girlish face but gets away with a madonna, plus other facial piercings, easily. Lou agreed, but added that Caroline's madonna is very tiny: she wears a 1.6mm internally-threaded labret stud with a tiny 2.5mm ball on it. Eventually I decided not to have it done on that day, as I needed thinking time, and got my left tragus pierced instead.
About a month later, I realised I had one more day of annual leave due to me at work. I needed to use up all my leave by the end of May, and decided another shopping trip to Manchester was due. I also decided that I wanted another piercing done, but couldn't decide between getting the second half of my intended double rook, a madonna or an inner conch. I booked May 21st as a holiday from work, and found myself on the train from Nottingham, where I live (for my sins) up to Manchester. During the tedious journey, I finally decided I was going to go for the madonna.
When I'd done with my shopping I headed over to Oldham Street, and was greeted by Lou, Alison the counter whore ;-) and another Louise, to whom I shall refer simply as Louise, the newish apprentice I hadn't yet met. Lou and I had another girly gossip, in between her doing piercings on various clients. I discussed my facial suitability for a madonna with Alison, who also has a tiny one like Caroline's, and she showed me what the internally-threaded labret stud was all about (I'd never seen one before) - and I finally, finally made up my mind to get it. I told Lou what I had in mind, and she said that she wouldn't pierce me with anything bigger than the 2.5mm ball on the 1.6mm internally-threaded labret, as it wouldn't suit me ("You don't want a great big...THING stuck on your face," I quote). She only had jewelled balls in, which I wasn't overseen about to be honest but I had no choice, so I plumped for a light blue jewel and waited for it to be autoclaved.
Now, I am not the world's bravest "piercee", as Lou can tell you, despite the fact I have been pierced on many occasions. I shake like a leaf before a piercing and squeal and whine throughout the actual procedure. Because of this, Lou always offers me topical anaesthetic, even though we both know it doesn't really do that much, so I lay on the couch dribbling as she applied it to the inside and outside of my left upper lip. She then asked me to smile and dotted the skin, then I smiled again and she re-placed the dot slightly nearer to my lip. She and Louise scrutinised the placement, and I looked in the mirror: we were all agreed that it was just in the right spot.
At that point, Lou dropped the internally-threaded ball on the floor, so there was a short pause as it was re-sterilised. Let's call this the intermission.
All systems go again: I lay back on the couch and, being a wuss, asked Louise to hold my hand, which she obligingly did. Lou was just about to apply the clamps to my lip when - my mobile phone rang! I was SO embarrassed and can't apologise enough to Lou or Louise for being *so rude*. Please remember to turn your mobile off when you go into the piercing room! *blush* Anyway, phone dealt with I lay back again, and Lou put the clamps into place. I gripped Louise's hand tightly, shut my eyes and took in a deep breath.
As I breathed out, Lou pushed the needle through my lip. There was a sharp, very painful scratch as it entered, and a slightly less painful scratch as it came out. I grunted and my right leg did its usual jerky dance, but it was actually much less painful than I anticipated - of course, everyone feels pain differently, but for me it hurt more than a regular lower lip piercing but significantly less than my vertical labret. Lou then slid through the jewellery, which I didn't feel at all, and screwed the ball into place. I opened my eyes to find a grinning Louise looking at me, and Lou muttering a prayer of thanks for getting the ball on first time! I started to bleed at this point, so Lou carefully cleaned me up and when the flow seemed stymied I went to have a look at my new addition in the mirror. It somehow looked completely different to how I expected it, but overall I liked it a lot. Hurrah!
By this time it was almost closing time for the shop, so I bade Lou, Louise and Alison - and Jenn and Mike, who were also there - farewell and made my way to the train station to go home. The numbness from the anaesthetic had mostly worn off by this stage, and the piercing was sore and throbbing and really quite painful, especially when I smiled or laughed. Unfortunately I managed to miss my train by a whisker, so I had to amuse myself in Manchester Piccadilly station for an hour until the next one. My amusement involved me giving into temptation and having a bacon double cheeseburger, which was a big mistake as I promptly caught my new piercing on my teeth as I chewed and only by a supreme effort managed to stop myself swearing very loudly in front of the dear little old lady I had sat next to. I thought perhaps it should only be soup and other liquid sustenance for the next few da ys, but unfortunately my willpower just isn't that strong.
The pain started to subside as I neared Nottingham almost four hours after the piercing was done, and by the time I was home it had stopped hurting while my mouth was immobile. It still stung when I smiled or laughed, but was more or less pain free when eating, although I couldn't open my mouth very wide, and it also didn't hurt to brush my teeth. That night I noticed it had bled a little more, so I cleaned it with an antiseptic swab Lou had given me, took some ibuprofen to combat any swelling, and went to bed. I was plagued that night by dreams of stabbings and monsters with big pointy teeth, but I think that's just me and not a side-effect many people need to worry about ;-) I also took out my nostril piercing at this point; I decided I simply looked nicer with the madonna and no nose piercing than with them both, so I kissed it goodbye (although the next morning I could still get a nostril screw in it, so I suspect it will still be with me for a while). I also ordered a plain, non-jewelled 2.5mm ball for my piercing, as I really wasn't keen on the jewelled one I was wearing.
Piercing at approximately six hours old.
The next day, I noticed my piercing had swelled quite a bit, which is extremely unusual for me as I usually don't suffer with swelling, and certainly not to this extent. It was because she knew this that Lou didn't pierce me with a long labret stud, and I started to worry that perhaps I was getting my comeuppance for such complacency. I took ibuprofen again, but it didn't seem to help. That afternoon I decided something needed to be done about it, so I put an ice pack on it, and then gave it a 10-minute salt soak. These certainly soothed the piercing, which had been throbbing a little, but the swelling didn't seem to go down at all. But it also didn't get any worse, which I supposed could only be a good thing. I also noticed that the internal part of the labret was clacking against my teeth a lot and catching on my gum when I smiled, but presumed that kind of behaviour would settle down more as the swelling subsided.
Swelling around the piercing the day after it was done
- and really badly applied lipstick ;-)
The next morning, on the Sunday, I woke up at about 7.30am and I immediately touched my cheek to see how the swelling was getting on. I got the shock of my life: I could barely feel the ball of the piercing in amongst all the swelling. I scurried to the mirror and regarded an ugly, swollen mouth with horror. This was not good: the ball was vanishing into my flesh and it was red and angry looking. The swelling had spread from the left side of my lip to the right and went up my face to the top of my nostril; my mouth was pushed out of position and I looked as though I'd been punched in the mouth, only without any bruising. The worst thing was that the swollen area was hard to the touch and also a little numb, which scared me. Something drastic needed to be done.
Still bleary with sleep, I hunted around for my plastic bag of piercing jewellery, where I knew I had a 12mm long labret stud from the days when I wore an 'ordinary' lower lip piercing. I found the stud, but it had no ball; I hunted again and eventually found a spare 4mm SSS ball that would fit the stud. I then located my only internally-threaded barbell, which has lost its balls, and headed into the bathroom to sort myself out.
Now, I really don't recommend you follow this course of action, but I was fairly desperate at this point. Please don't do this unless you know what you're doing; changing the jewellery in a 36 hour old piercing is NOT a good idea - I'm a veteran of over 30 piercings now and I was much less than 50% certain I could pull this off and not lose my piercing. I had no access to an autoclave, but as I was the only person who had ever worn this jewellery I figured that I had little risk of catching some horrific blood-borne disease from it; my only risk was of an infection in the piercing, which I would combat by doing regular salt soaks. I scrubbed the labret stud and barbell as thoroughly as I could with antibacterial liquid soap, and then washed off my piercing and donned latex gloves. I knew that there was no way I could pull the stud out and replace it with the new one as the piercing was so fresh, and as I had no cannulas my intricate plan was to remove the stud while follo wing the "retreating" jewellery with the end of my internally-threaded barbell. I would then screw the end of the new, externally-threaded labret stud into the end of that barbell, and pull it back through the piercing - I couldn't see the hole on the inside of my mouth and this was the only way I could really see myself successfully changing this jewellery.
So, with that somewhat complex plan in mind, I set about it. The first task to do was to unscrew the tiny ball on the old stud, which was incredibly painful to do because of the swelling, but I managed it eventually. I positioned the barbell over the end of the stud, and withdrew the latter while pushing on the former. It went through smoothly and almost entirely painlessly except for one sharp stab of pain as the barbell exited the hole. Then I encountered a problem: the screw part of the externally-threaded stud was too big to screw into the internally-threaded barbell. Damn. Undeterred, I decided to go ahead anyway as I really had nothing to lose at this point, and placed the end of the stud over the barbell and did the push/pull method again. To my utter delight, it worked first time.
My madonna was now extremely painful and swollen, and also bleeding again, but I could feel the relief immediately. I knew that it would react badly to this treatment, but at least the ball was no longer being sucked into my flesh and I had spare room between my skin and the ball on the new 12mm stud. I took the following photograph for the purposes of this account (please excuse my looking like shit, but who looks good that early on Sunday anyway?).
The "just stepped out of the boxing ring" look was in that year
I cleaned the piercing with a salt soak, then went back to bed, both relieved that I wasn't going to have a labret stud permanently embedded in my face and worried that I'd damaged myself by doing what I'd just done. My boyfriend took one look at me and told me that I looked like I'd had collagen lip implants that had gone wrong à la Leslie Ash, which was just what I needed to hear and boosted my self-esteem no end... When we got up again I treated my lip, which still felt hard, hot and swollen, to a salt soak and ice pack and ate my breakfast very carefully.
We went for a long walk that morning to a lake near our home, and halfway through my boyfriend told me it looked like the swelling had gone down, and sure enough it wasn't so hot or hard any more. I checked it in the mirror when we arrived home and it was certainly less swollen than it had been, although it was still noticeable. It was also fairly crusty, which wasn't surprising, but on the whole looked much better and I felt a lot happier about it all.
The next day the swelling was very much reduced, and was now restricted to the immediate area around the piercing, although my lip was still a tiny bit distended. I cleaned the crusties off and took my new addition to work, where thankfully it passed without comment. I made sure I had a bottle of water with me, to rinse the piercing off after I ate my dinner, and tried not to play with or pick at the piercing during the day. I'd been taking ibuprofen regularly to try and combat the swelling throughout all this, but I forgot to bring extra supplies to work but the lack of drugs didn't seem to have an adverse effect on me, for which I was grateful as I'm not keen on taking painkillers for an extended period of time.
Two days later and the swelling was almost gone, for which I was most grateful. Other problems had arisen by now though - just minor irritations more than problems, really, but bothersome nonetheless. Firstly, my gum was becoming slightly irritated by the back of the labret stud, but I knew that was because I was wearing a longer stud than I would normally be doing. Although it was annoying and sore, I wasn't too concerned. Secondly, the 12mm stud was catching frequently on my teeth when I ate or spoke, which was not only annoying and painful but also rather embarrassing when it happened in the middle of meetings at work! I even started to cover my mouth with my hand when I talked, and found myself actually holding the ball of the stud and pulling my lip up and away from my teeth when I ate. Again, this problem would be solved when I switched back down to the shorter stud. The piercing was also becoming rather dry around the external exit hole, and the skin was flaky and peeling away from the hole, but I'd experienced this with my lower lip piercings and knew it was quite normal for me. Additionally, I'd enjoyed a couple of pain-free days up until now, but it started up again - the pain post-piercing was more like a bruised sensation, but the pain I was experiencing at this point was much more like a cut or a graze; sharper, less dull than before. And finally, and this was the most irritating irritation of all, the piercing was lymphing like I'd never experienced before. The crusties were plentiful and, seeing as though the piercing was not exactly hidden away, very obvious, which I found embarrassing. I kept finding dribbles of crusty stuff below the piercing, and it oozed constantly. I seem to be very hit-and-miss when it comes to crusties - sometimes they just don't happen, other times there's loads, and this was definitely the latter (for example, my six week old tragus was hardly lymphing at all at this point, and never had, whereas my first tragus piercing was crusty heaven).
When the piercing was exactly a week old, I decided it was time to change the 12mm stud to something shorter. It was catching on my teeth far too often, which was (a) uncomfortable and (b) not doing the piercing much good at all. It was red and sore, and skin around it still very dry: there wasn't much I could do about the dryness, but the irritation was being caused by too long a bar wobbling around in the hole. I bought a new 10mm labret stud and a 3mm ball - nowhere seemed to sell internally-threaded studs at less than extortionate prices, so I had to settle for externally-threaded - and cleaned up ready to do the change. It went without a hitch. It soon started to feel better and was definitely feeling less irritated just a couple of hours later. Even the crusties, which were still not shy about making themselves known, seemed to be abating slightly. My piercing now strongly resembled a large and angry spot, as you can see from the picture below, but I hoped that that was down to the irritation it had suffered over its short existence, and it would soon settle down.
After changing to the 10mm stud
An uneventful week later, when the piercing was two weeks old, all the swelling seemed to have gone and there was absolutely no pain at all - except for when I caught the ball on my hand when washing my face, which stung a bit. There was still a small area of redness around the hole, but it certainly didn't look as bad as it has done. Because the swelling had gone down even more, the 10mm labret stud was now too long, and I worried that it would cause irritation problems like the 12mm one had done. A couple of days later this proved to be the case and it was starting to get painful and crusty again, so I armed myself with the latex gloves, scrubbed up and changed the stud to the 8mm-long one I had originally been pierced with, this time fitted with the plain 2.5mm ball ordered from Wildcat just after I had been pierced. Changing the jewellery was completely pain-free, and I loved the way the tiny ball looked on my face - so much so t hat I'm contemplating having my right lip pierced with a matching madonna!
Two weeks old:
a little red but back in the original jewellery and very happy
So, it's been a traumatic 16 days for my poor piercing as I write this. It's had its jewellery changed three times in that period, which I repeat is not the best of ideas, but that came from necessity rather than just plain foolishness on my behalf. Ideally, I would have changed to a 10mm stud straight away rather than to a 12mm one, then down to the 10mm one, then back to 8mm, but as it was a Sunday and I was in a fair amount of pain, I didn't have much option but to use old jewellery that I already had. I made sure that everything was as clean as it could be without an autoclave every time I changed the jewellery, and also did regular salt soaks (which, I have to admit, is almost unheard of for me!) in the following days to stave off any possible infection, and I came through unscathed. My piercing is now little and pretty, and I love it. It's still a bit red and dry, which is to be expected at this stage, but I look forward to an uncomplicated healing from hereon. Man y thanks to Lou and Louise, for piercing and looking after me, and also many thanks to my mum, for not fainting on the spot when she saw "what I'd gone and done to myself this time". ;-)
In context