About a year ago, I decided on an impulse that I wanted to get my navel pierced. This wasn't my first piercing – I have two holes in each earlobe – but it was my first real piercing since I had the ear piercings done at a kiosk in the mall since I didn't know any better at the time. I had been toying with the idea of a real body piercing for awhile but hadn't worked up the courage to actually go get it done. However, one day, I told my boyfriend that I wanted to go get my navel pierced and I wanted to do it right then...that's when the trouble started.
At A Glance Author Jess Contact Jess@bme.anon When A year ago Artist Brooke Studio Time Bomb Location Frederick, MD Since this was an impulsive decision, I didn't get to do any research on studios or piercers, so we just went to the first place we came to – Time Bomb. The studio itself wasn't exceptional, but it didn't repulse me or anything, so I told the guy behind the counter (he was the only one there) that I wanted to get my navel pierced. He made a copy of my license, had my sign the release form, and then we went into the back room. He had me stand in front of him while he took a toothpick dipped in purple ink and marked where he would place the piercing, then had me check it for placement before he began. I lay down on the "table," which really looked more like an ambulance stretcher than a table (it had wheels and everything), and he showed me all of the sterile materials that he would be using. He put the clamp on, which didn't hurt at all, and told me to breathe as he pushed the needle through. Up until this point, the whole process had been very smooth with no problems, but he ran into trouble when he actually did the piercing. He hit some resistance as he put the needle through, but it wasn't too bad and not really painful – I have a high pain tolerance. The pain started when he tried to insert the jewelry. It felt like he hadn't actually pierced me and was trying to pierce me with the blunt end of the jewelry. I was in tears, and my boyfriend looked like he wanted to kill the man for putting me through this. He kept fighting with the jewelry, and I was fighting with myself to go through with it – I figured that once he got the jewelry in, it would be over and I'd end up with a nice piercing. He stopped at one point, and I thought that perhaps it was over, but he told me that he was having trouble getting the jewelry in and was going to try one more time. He tried again, and it was getting more painful as he kept fighting with it, but he finally got it in and told me that he was finished. I stood up, looked at it and decided that even though it looked like it was placed too deep, I liked it so it wa "\Ãw€ë s worth the painful experience, and we walked out to the front of the shop so he could tell me about the aftercare.
After he explained aftercare procedures to me, he decided to tell me why he had so much trouble with the piercing and the jewelry. Apparently, I don't have a good "ledge" for the piercing to go through so he had to make the piercing very deep (it was so deep that you couldn't see the bottom ball on the barbell), but the problem with making it deep was that I also apparently don't have very thick skin in the navel area, so it was possible that he had gone back into the muscle behind the navel (I have no idea whether or not this is possible, but this is what he told me). He quickly added, however, that he was 99% sure that he had only pierced through skin. He also explained that the reason the jewelry insertion had been so difficult was because the deepness of the piercing meant that a regular 3/8" barbell was too short and didn't extend far enough through the piercing to screw on the top ball; however, instead of getting a longer barbell, he used a pair of pliers to yank on the end of the barbell until it came through far enough (I had my eyes closed through this to try to not focus on the pain, so I had no idea what he had been doing – but it was no wonder that my boyfriend was ready to kill him). He said that he hoped it didn't give me any problems, but to come back if it did and he would change the barbell for a longer one (again – why didn't he just use a longer one to begin with?!).
After the horrible experience at the shop, things only got worse. I got the piercing on a Saturday, and by Tuesday I was in so much pain that I went back to Time Bomb and had him change the barbell. The one that was in was so short that it was essentially "sucking" the top ball into the top of the piercing and sending shooting pain through the area every time I moved. So he changed the barbell free of charge (I would have refused to pay for it anyway since he screwed it up to begin with) and I went back home. That helped the pain somewhat, but it was still pretty painful, and very red. After a few days, a large lump of scar tissue began growing out of the bottom of the piercing, so I went back to the studio to find out if there was anything that I could do about it. This time, the owner was there instead of my piercer, but he looked at it and said to just rub vitamin E oil on it and hopefully it would reabsorb the extra tissue. I fought so hard to keep my piercing...I followed the aftercare instructions to the letter and massaged it with oil twice a day for seven months before I finally gave up on it – the lump was only getting bigger and it had never stopped draining. I took it out four months ago, and all that's left now is a dark brown scar at the top and a small lump inside my navel that never totally went away.
Someday I would like to get my navel repierced, but I am not going to make the mistake of not thoroughly checking out the studio and piercer this time. Hopefully the scar tissue in the area won't be a problem and it will be pierced shallower this time so that you can actually see the bottom ball. Luckily my first real piercing experience did not turn me off to piercings; if anything, I am more obsessed now than I ever was!