One day when I was about 12 years old, I decided that I wanted to pierce my navel. Knowing that my parents would never be willing to give their consent for me to have it professionally done, I took it upon myself to do it. I had very limited experience with piercings (at the time all I had were two sets of holes in my earlobes), and I knew next to nothing about the procedure.
At A Glance Author Chimaera Contact queen.of.decadence@gmail.com When Five years ago Artist me Studio my bathroom Location my home
So, on a trip to the mall, I bought a 16 gauge stainless steel curved barbell from Claire's, and bided my time until my parents had gone to bed that night. After they had retired, I gathered my materials (namely, a large sewing needle, the barbell, and an ice cube) and locked myself in the bathroom. I had the presence of mind to disinfect the area to be pierced with hydrogen peroxide, and to hold the needle over a lit match for a few seconds, but not enough sense to know that this was a far from fail-safe technique.
After icing the area for a few minutes to numb it, I positioned the needle with one hand, using the other to pinch up the flesh where I wanted it pierced. I then began to push with the needle. Having a fairly high pain tolerance, the pain was far from unbearable, but as the needle I was using was very dull, it took a surprising amount of force to push the needle through my flesh, but it got easier once I made it past the skin.
It took me several long minutes to get the needle most of the way through; once it reached the skin on the other side, my hands were sweaty and it was hard to grip the needle. The most difficult and painful part was that final layer of skin; I just could not get the needle to go through it. After what seemed to be an eternity of alternating between pushing and resting, it finally broke through the other side. I pushed most of the needle all the way through to the other side, and grabbed the barbell; I fit the end of it into the top hole with no problem, so I stupidly slid the whole needle out. Bad idea. This left nothing to keep the flesh from closing up on the other side, so by the time I got the barbell most of the way through, I had lost the exit hole, meaning that I basically had to repierce the last 1/8" or so with the end of the barbell.
So finally, after a lot of struggling and swearing, I got the end through, and screwed on the ball. The skin around the area was pretty red and hot to the touch, and it was oozing a little bit of clear fluid, but I was so happy to have finally gotten the jewelry in that it didn't bother me. I went to bed satisfied.
The next morning, it was still a little swollen and red, but there didn't seem to be any real problem.
My aftercare basically consisted of taking extra care to rinse it during showers, and basically leaving it alone otherwise.
After a couple days, the swelling still wasn't down, and I noticed that the top ball was digging into the flesh, creating a small open sore around entry hole. I thought this was normal, so I just left it alone.
After a couple more days, the sore got deep, so that the bottom half of the ball was sunk in it. I put some Desitin (which my family uses like the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding uses Windex) on it, and tried to put a small band-aid between the ball and the majority of the sore, which obviously didn't work too well, since the shaft of the barbell was kind of in the way.
I now knew that the barbell was too short to accommodate the swelling, but having no more money to spend on a new, longer one, I simply tried to heal it with sheer will-power. Unfortunately, this didn't work.
After a few more days, the barbell shaft started to work its way through my skin on the bottom end, leaving another open wound in its wake. Obviously it was rejecting, but I didn't know this then; I taped it down with a band-aid, and hoped that it would eventually somehow heal itself back into my flesh. No such luck. Within days, almost the entire thing had worked its way through my skin, leaving only about 1/6" remaining.
It was at this point that I finally admitted failure and removed the barbell, determined to try repiercing it later, after it had healed up. Within days it closed up, and was completely healed within a couple of weeks.
Now, nearly five years later, I still have a faint yellow and pink scar there, which in a way I hope never fades, so that I can always have a reminder of what happens when you don't do your research. These days I don't even really want to get my navel pierced again, as I no longer even like the look of navel piercings.
I have since done several more piercings on myself, most of which went well with no hitches, as I now know the importance of doing my research, and knowing my body's signals.
So, in short, if you are considering piercing yourself anywhere, make sure you know what you're doing, and that you have the right materials; otherwise, it's really not worth the risk.