Ok, so here goes.
At A Glance Author ki Contact kiaya_1612@msn.com When Six months ago Location coventry A bit of background information; I'm sixteen years old now, I live in Coventry (near Birmingham), and I've been into bod mod only for about a year, after stumbling across BME one night. It fascinated me, and as soon as I started flicking through all of the photographs, I just had an urge to get some. Not one, some! I couldn't even decide what to get first.I just longed for many holes filled with shiny metal in my body! At the age of about four months my aunt snook me away to get my ears pieced as my dad is dead against it, I also had my navel done at about eleven years,(also unknown to my father!), so I guess I wasn't new to piercings but I wanted something abit different.
I have a thing for gold bars and after hours of trundling through hundreds of photos I decided on a rook piercing with a small, shiny gold bar in it. Very few people where I live have piercings other than lobe, so this was strangely big news to my friends. None of them supportive in the slightest, and with many comments to the effect of "you're weird." Or "you'll never go through with it." But naturally this just spurred me on.
Anyway, an ordinary day in town no plans of the piercing kind and no money left, we walked past the piercing studio. And my friend turns and says that she will buy me the rook I wanted as a birthday present, as it was my birthday the next weekend. But only on the condition I got it there and then. So in we went. I spoke with the lovely lady behind the counter and she said that there was only a half an hour waits.
This was when the nerves set in. This piece of cartilage is quite thick and I imagined it to hurt like a bitch. Just pinching it sent a shooting stab feeling all the way down my neck. Typically to me, I was left in the position of thinking "ok, so this is really going to happen. What have I got myself into?"
When the piercer called me in I remember looking at her face, and noticing the multiple stab wounds she was trying to mask with a tonne of foundation! From rejected piercings I figured and this wasn't very reassuring. There was a brief run through of proper aftercare technique and she marked my ear. A quick look in the mirror and a few sheepish nods from my friends and the clamp went on. I felt the clamp was unexpectedly painful. Maybe it was because I wasn't in control or because I didn't know the piercer but anyhow, I didn't like the feel of the clamp. I didn't use any kind of numbing cream or freeze spray, so it was a good job she squeezed the clamp so hard, it kinda numbed it slightly. Then she told me to start breathing deep and slow. And on the third exhale she slowly skewed my rook with a long thick needle. I'm not going to lie. It hurt. No not hurt. PAIN. As much as I tried, I couldn't help but wimper, and my face winced at the pain. Because of where it is, she told me that she had to pierce it slowly as to avoid pushing the needle too far and piercing my helix by accident. But the pain was not over. The jewellery went in easily and quickly, only a weird sensation felt as she pulled the needle through and out. But as I prefer smaller gauge on cartilage piercings this made it quite fiddly for her to screw on the ball, and it took a few mins with a lot of head tilting and skin pinching until it was finally done. The deep, fiery pain went quite quickly though, so it, I hindsight, is not an unbearable experience, and well worth it.
After I had thanked everyone at the shop and my friend for this present, we left to walk home. After the actual piercing, I was very surprised how little it hurt. The pain was literally just her piercing my ear and manhandling the bar to screw it up. Afterwards I just felt a really enjoyable burning sensation for a few hours. Not strong enough to be described as painful or even to say that it hurt. Oddly I liked the feeling, and the wind blowing on it felt lovely.
The aftermath.
Although I really love my rook, it has not been the most pleasurable piercing so far. And I'm still trying o heal it now. It was fine for about a week, no puss or pain or even blood unlike what I expected. But this did not last. My rook swelled up, to about double the size of the other side, and stayed this way. Also it went very red and started to puss alot. I was worried, so I went back to the intentionally un-named studio seeking advice and reassurance. But I wasn't so lucky. When I asked her to look at it because it also had a big lump next to the exit hole at the top, she just screwed her face as if to say I was crazy for even thinking that they would help! She didnt even look at it and just dismissingly said, "Yes, you have a lump there because it is a cartilage piercing and thats what happens!" and turned and walked away! :/ I don't know, you'd have thought I swore at her or something but I guess she just must have had a bad day.
So I continued to salt water and clean my piercing twice or more daily and hopefully it will heal soon. You don't realize how much you use a part of your body, until you shove a piece of metal through it. Everyday tasks like brushing my hair and sleeping on my side became military operations. And even listening to music through earphones was impossible.
There have been a few incidents which resulted in my loosing alot of blood, as im a very active person and play alot of sport, but taking all of this moaning i've done into account, I still LOVE this piercing.
After a visit to a much friendlier piercing studio nearby, where the lady cleaned it, and applied some liquid that I don't know what it was, my rook is looking ALOT better. The lump has gone and the swelling has finally gone down too. It looks so pretty and I feel a sense of pride over it. I'd recommend this piercing, but only to people that have a good pain tolerance, are able to commit to cleaning rituals and most importantly to someone that has done their research regarding piercers.