*-My quad navel-*
At A Glance Author *jessica* Contact *jessica*@bme.anon Artist multiple piercers Studio Atomic Location Austin, TX Ok, so what do you do when you are forced to no longer have visible piercings because of your chosen field of study or profession? Because apparently parents would not want their child's kindergarten teacher to have facial piercings (no doubt a sign of a horrible teacher, in their humble opinions)... Well for me to be accepted in my student teaching sequence it meant making sacrifices I knew would come someday but that I wasn't happy about at all... for me being a teacher meant having to take out my eyebrow... find a 6-gauge way to hide my tongue piercing and figuring out something new to pierce that wouldn't be in plain sight for the parents to judge. After discussing piercings with my mod-free mate, I had been nicely asked to keep my "private" areas off limits... so I had a new idea...
I had once worked with a girl who had the scars left from having her top and the sides of her navel pierced and I had been thinking about that for a while... but being a symmetry freak I had to make it a fully compass and have 4.... so one day I decided to take my 5 year old top navel piercing to the next level.... So I went to my favorite shop and asked about getting the other three sides of my navel done... he said I should do them one at a time (much to my dismay, I have very little patience when it comes to things like that)... but I agreed to do only the bottom that day....
So we went back he measured it out and pierced it... but after looking at it, he decided it was too shallow, so he asked if he could try again; I said sure... (But was thinking, "so why can't I get multiple piercings at once?") So he pierced me again... this time much deeper but still using the original top hole which seemed to cause some problems later in the healing process... I said thanks, checked it out in the mirror, shelled out my 60 bucks and was on my way.... I decided to show a few of my friends which didn't turn out like i expected.
The reaction I was getting from people was not nearly as positive as I had hoped, (lots of "why?"s) but I was still determined to finish my quad... My 21st birthday was in three weeks so I really wanted to get it done before that, so after a few days I decided I couldn't wait any longer so I convinced a friend of mine to buy me one of my piercings for my birthday and I would pay for the other one and of course a nice little tip....
So we traveled back to the shop and asked about getting the sides done... a different piercer (who later I find out is actually a tattoo artist)... this time but he said he could do it then and had no problems doing the other two at once, so I was all ready to go... he used longer barbells than my previous two piercings to "allow for extra swelling".... And he also warned me of the higher risk of the sides migrating out, but seeing as none of my other piercings had ever migrated I wasn't really worried... he measured me up, laid me down and pierced away... I must say there was definitely more pain involved in the sides than had been on either the top of bottom... but I was very pleased with the results...
So I took my new quad navel out for a spin and showed it to a few friends... only I'd say two of my friends have ever had a purely positive reaction, but it doesn't really change my opinion of it... I love it... but now for the sad news... I got them pierced in mid April and it is now mid July and one of the sides is having a lot of trouble... it is constantly red, irritated, and a somewhat painful... the bottom had trouble for a while because the original hole (that he repierced) kept acting up and not healing.... Now the bottom seems pretty much healed but it is a lot shallower than any of the other ones....
The side barbells are too long in my opinion but I guess they had to be done that way... if by chance the side has to be redone I won't be sad, but I will definitely wait till it's a little cooler, apparently the heat has made the healing harder... the popularity of my piercing has not really gone up, in fact the girl who purchased one of my sides for me even has told me she thinks they are just "too much" but to that I just reply... "well it's not on your body so you can relax", I have no intention of giving up my quad, and I'm looking into my next mods including my first tattoo (of course in a discreet place =))....