Ok, first off I would like to say that I have been interested in the art of body mods for a long time now. Probably longer than most kids. I've loved the sight of them since I was probably around 12. I do have a pretty high pain tolerance too so I figured, why not do my own...
At A Glance Author HeadingNowhere Contact headingnowhere@aol.com When A month ago Artist Myself! Hardly and artist Location Buffalo, NY Work got slow one day at the snowboard shop I work at. My co-worker has 3 lip piercings alone, plus many other piercings. And thus begins the downward spiral, haha. I "sanitized" a circular barbell with some anti-bacterial soap and some hydrogen peroxide. I do know the error of my ways now though. So anyways, I came through the front of my lip but a bit lower (somewhere between a labret and a lip piercing). I just started twisting and pushing the barbell through. I got about 90% of the way there when I found that it wasn't really sharp enough to pop through the stretchy skin on the inside of my mouth. This was after about 15 minutes of struggling. So dumbass me has to go and get a better idea. After searching around I find a pack of brand new trim nails! Brilliant! So here we go again after "sanitizing" the nail, twisting and twisting, then it finally popped through. I believe it took a total of about 35 minutes of some half way decent pain between my first attempt to the nail. I twisted a couple more time to make sure it'll stay open a bit, took it out, slid the new jewelery in and presto, I had a new lip piercing!
And then comes all the bad. I was lucky enough not to get an infection. So that was good. I proceeded to keep good after care of it and I was real proud of it. So I went snowboarding, slammed onto my face, lost a huge amount of blood and my lip grew to about 3 times it's normal size. I had a concussion and my piercing was cutting of my lip's circulation.
I wanted to keep it in because I've heard that if you take it out, that's pretty much it, it's done. So I kept it in, doubling up the aftercare. Swelling eventually went down after 2 weeks or so and much sea salt soaks and Provon cleaning. But my lip never went down completely. I'm thinking that this is normal.
My friend and me were just goofing around and she bumped my lip, it was tender but it didn't hurt. I could feel my lip swell up super quickly and it was bleeding pretty good. Now the back is lymphing like crazy again (just like when I first injured it) and the back has is a bit white. I'm taking care of it, hoping everything will pass.
I forgot to mention that during that snowboard injury, my piercing ripped a bit and there's a small split in the back of it. I'm praying that it's not going to reject...
So I guess the lesson is, haha, don't use a nail, go to a professional. Don't head butt the snow while snowboarding, ESPECIALLY, when you have a new lip piercing. Oh yeah, don't wrestle with your friend, either.
So the current state of the piercing as of January 26th is that the ridge where the split occured is whitish on the one side, yellowish, slightly greenish lymph and whatnot is coming out of the hole on the inside of the mouth, and occasional clearish, watered down blood also comes out. In the mornings when I wake up I have a pile of brown all over the inside of the piercing, I'm guessing that's just old blood and what not. I'm hoping that all the stuff that's coming out is just that residual swelling from the whole concussion incident. The swelling certainly seems to have spread from the corners of my lip more towards the center as if it is trying to drain everything out.
My after care consists of sea salt soak in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to bed with an extremely high salt content, washing out with Provon provided by a local piercer in my area, and q tipping the shit out of the back of the wound. I occasionally use mouth wash also.
So even though I've had problems with this piercing, I am still somewhat interested in piercings that other people have done themselves. It's my belief that this piercing would still have been perfect if it wasn't for that injury and that if I have gotten it done at a professional piercer, the same would have happened with these circumstances.
If anyone has some tips or experiences similiar to mine e-mail me...headingnowhere@aol.com
eric