At A Glance
Author	Caitlin
Contact	Caitlin@bme.anon
IAM	.caitlin.
When	A week ago
Artist	Not Sure
Studio	Trendez
Location	Napier, NZ

I'm very nearly at the stage now where I've had a piercing in every possible place. My ears have been filled with metal, I've had five nose piercings, seven navel piercings have scarred my belly, and there's metal in my pants. However, despite having some odder adornments- namely a sternum, a hand web and a nape- I've always avoided having facial piercings, apart from my nostril. There's a few reasons for this: i'm a slow healer, and so I thought that having such a visable healing piercing would be a bit gross; I work, so it would possibly affect the way I was regarded by partons (I'm a librarian); plus my parents would probably be annoyed. However, when I turned twenty I realised that these reasons were silly if I was letting them stand in the way of having a piercing which I would love. If I let a piercing take it's sweet time healing, then that's ok, as long as it was clean and crustie-free. My work turns a blind eye to visable mods, and because the library I work for is at a university, half the people I serve are also modded- it's common for students in NZ to have piercings, and certainly no one looks oddly at a person with a couple of visable piercings. As for my parents, I realised that living 1,000 kilometers away from them, and being independant, means that they're really not able to have much input on what I decide to do. If they think a piercing is ugly, that's fine, because they don't have to see it apart from the two weeks or so that I'm home each year. Last week was one such week, and I turned up without any visable piercings, apart from my conches. Mum told me I looked nice, and Dad said he was glad that I was getting over the piercing thing. Hah.

Dental appointments are not something that I look foward to. Considering how much time I've spent in dental chairs being pierced, you could assume that I would feel right at home, but nup. I dread the dentist and his scary 18ga needles that go into your gums and feel like they're coming through the bottom of your jaw. Naturally, I was nervous about heading to the dentist last week, as on my previous visit I had been told that I would need two fillings- conveniently on opposite sides of my mouth. This meant two injections. They STUNG and seemed to last forever, until that dull heavy feeling took over and I essentially lost control over my nerves in my face. The dentist did his thing, chatting the whole time (why do they always ask you questions when there's three instruments plus a mini-vacuum cleaner in your mouth?!), and I paid the bill. I was then left with an hour to kill before I could meet my mum and head home. I prodded my face and tried to smile before it dawned on me that I could use the extreme numbness to an advantage, and get the lip piercing I had been thinking about on and off for a year!

There was a line at the bank, and it took me about fifteen minutes to get the money from my savings account and get to Trendez, which is the only piercing studio in Napier. I've been there before, and while there's no extraordianry piercers, they're fine at doing simple proceedures. I went in and paid the $30 for a lip piercing, with a 16ga 10mm ring. There was no wait once the piercer, who never told me her name, got rid of her idiotic looking boy. The piercer called me ducks, which was odd, because I was probably older than her. We went into the back room and she closed the door.

Because I had been prodding my lip I was worried that the anaesthetic might have worn off somewhat. However, when she marked my lip, I didn't even feel it, and so that reassured me. I'm not afraid of piercing pain, as I know that it's so quick in comparison to injections, but ideally the anaesthetic would mean that I didn't feel anything. I wasn't happy with the marking which she drew on, and so I asked if I would be able to mark it myself. She agreed, and I carefully dotted my lip, right on the lip line. She then clamped me and I relaxed, because clamps are usually the thing that are most painful for me, and I couldn't feel a thing. She quickly pierced me, but it wasn't until she turned away that I realised it was done. I was still completely numb, half an hour after the anaesthetic!

I babble when I'm happy, but I still was talking thickly because of the numbness in my lip. I bled a fair bit, which was again interesting because I couldn't feel any dripping. A couple of minutes later I looked in the mirror, and was instantly stoked. The jewellery fell at the exact angle that I'd imagined, and although it was already swelling, it looked awesome. I was on quite the high as I left the shop (we don't tip in NZ), and went to buy a water. It was very awkward to drink, as I heavily favoured the non-pierced side of my mouth, but I couldn't feel my lips at all. I poured a fair bit of water down my front.

When I met with my mum she frowned and told me it looked ugly. My dad had much the same reaction, but that's really to be expected, as my parents are fairly conservative. I tried to not play with the ring, which is still proving difficult. I can flick it with my tougue, as the ball of the CBR is on the inside. I'm planning on switching to a seamless ring when it's settled down a bit.

As the anaesthetic wore off my lip started to throb- plus, the two poor teeth which had just been drilled and filled. I took a neurofen, which helped a lot, and kept drinking a lot of water. That evening, after a shower, I soaked my lip in salt water. I was more concerned with the outside part than the inside part, as my oral piercings have all healed with minimal attention, whereas external piercings, as I mentioned before, are a bit more of a challenge to me. I have had success with a combination of the leave-it-the-fuck-alone and the sea-salt soaks method, which I'm using again. However, becaused I'm playing with this one a fair bit, I think that I might have to use a bit of tea-tree oil, which healed my nape up nicely in the past.

Another aspect of healing which never occurred to me is that I have fairly dry lips (it's just coming into spring now), which must usually naturally exfoliate with everyday activity. Because I'm still using the other side of my mouth for eating, drinking etc, there's a lot of dry skin around the piercing. Because I don't want to smother it with a lot of thick balm, I'm carefully rubbing my lip with a soft cloth after doing my salt soaks. By the end of the day it can look a little dry around the ring if I haven't done this for a while. I'm using a lanolin-based balm which is fragrance free, so hopefully if any does go near the fistula it won't upset it too much.

Overall, I'm stoked with my lip piercing. I really hope that it will heal happily, and I'll change the jewellery if necessary in order to aid it. I've bitten on it a couple of times by accident, which really stings, but apart from that it's been a relatively painless experience- while I hate recieving it, I must admit that anaesthetic has it's benefits. I'm looking foward to the next time I need it!