For my sixteenth birthday in January of 2007, I decided to get myself a present I had been wanting for about 3 years – a labret piercing. Looking back now I wouldn't have gone to the studio I ended up going to, although I didn't really have any problems. After taking care of it just how I had been told my labret healed up perfectly and I was very pleased with the results. About 5 weeks after getting the labret I was itching for more, and started browsing around BME for piercing ideas, none of the facial piercings really suited me and I wanted something unusual. Eventually I stumbled upon something called a lowbret, I was intrigued and looked up as many pictures of this piercing as I could find.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When It just happened Studio Trendz Location Christchurch, New Zealand Fast forward about 2 days and I was walking into the studio where I had got my labret done to get my first lowbret piercing, after explaining to the lady at the counter what I wanted and then explaining to the piercer, she decided she would do it. The piercing happened pretty much the same as a labret piercing would and once again was a trouble free healing.
About 4 weeks after getting the first lowbret, I went back for the second and got it done. Much to my dismay the second one was placed on a little bit of an angle compared to the first (although I was the only one that really noticed it)
The only trouble I initially had with my lowbrets was that they would both hook on the edge of my teeth when I was eating, which hurt a little and did look quite silly... but eventually it just stopped happening (either I started eating differently to compensate or they had both settled in against the edge of my mouth. Either way I was very pleased with these piercing.
Over the year or so that I have had the piercings done, I have had about 8 people come up and tell me my snakebites were too low, which never really makes me too happy. My lowbrets always seem to have crusties on the metal which is quite annoying, no amount of sea salt soaking will keep the crusties at bay, so its something I have just learned to put up with.
In January 2008 I went to a large outdoor dance festival in the outback of Australia for a few days and had a great time partying over there, but the large amount of dust, dirty water and not washing seemed to upset my right lowbret piercing a little and it began to feel quite sore, I just ignored it for the time being (we were in the desert with no means of boiling water and I had no sea salt with me). When we got back into the city to our hostel, I noticed the area around my right lowbret was quite swollen, so I cleaned it the best I could and packed off to bed for the night, hoping it would be better by morning. The next morning it was more swollen and I noticed that it was starting to cut into the back of my mouth, unfortunately I didn't have a longer bar to put into the piercing and still had nothing to clean it properly with. I thought it would be fine to leave it one more night as we were flying home the next morning. Come the next morning it was even more swollen and there was a little pus around the area, and then it turned out our flight was cancelled so ended up staying another night in Aussie. By this time there was a pretty constant stream of pus around the piercing (attractive I know) and on the last morning of being in Aussie the back of the labret stud had embedded into the back of my cheek a little bit, I managed to pry it lose and kept an eye on it all day.
Once I got home I gave it a really good clean with salt water, which made it feel quite a bit better and I took a couple of ibuprofen pills to help lessen the swelling as well as spent the night sucking on ice cubes. Come the next morning I felt the back of my lowbret with my tongue, and felt just skin. I knew what had happened so got up and rushed to the bathroom and checked inside my mouth and sure enough the back of the labret stud was covered by flesh and quite firmly embedded. I tried to push it back out but the infection just made it hurt a lot, so I quickly thought about my options, I could either try make into my piercer's today (but that wouldn't really work as I had no means of getting into town plus had work that day) so I decided to get it out myself.
I found a clean razor blade and gave it a quick wipe with alcohol (I know that isn't sterilising but oh well) and set myself the painful task of slicing into the back of my embedded lowbret, it took about half an hour but I eventually managed to pry one side of the back of the labret stud out and then popped the other side out. Then spent another 10 minutes trying to remove the ball off the end of the stud and finally got it all out. I am now sitting here contemplating what to do, I don't really want to trap the infection in my face but am not too keen on putting the bar back in, and I wont be able to buy a longer bar for about 4 days.
I am not sure if it was just the dust in the environment that caused my usually well behaved lowbret to become so grumpy, but none of my other 15 piercings played up at all so I just have to presume I knocked it and left it open to infection.
I don't think what I did was at all the safest/most intelligent option, but I felt I was left with no other option and I wasn't keen on having to wait four days with an embedded lowbret before seeing my piercer.