A little while ago, I attempted to heal venom piercings which were placed behind my 2-year old center tongue piercing in a triangle shape. This didn't work out as I had planned because I got way too hungry to heal both sides at once, so I took out the right one so I would have that side of my mouth for chewing, and set out to heal the left one by itself. Then after a few days, I realized the left barbell was rubbing against my gums right near my molars and would undoubtedly mess up my teeth; not to mention, it was uncomfortable. So I took it out.
At A Glance Author SpikeyAnnie Contact SpikeyAnnie@bme.anon IAM SpikeyAnnie When A week ago Artist me Studio my bathroom Location savannah, ga Meanwhile, I had ordered some more needles from BME, which arrived when I got back to Savannah to start school. So about a week ago, I went into the bathroom armed with my arsenal of piercing supplies, and decided to give the whole thing a second shot. I looked at the bottom part of my tongue in a magnifying mirror for about 20 minutes and realized that in order to avoid hurting my teeth, the venoms would have to go at a very extreme angle, which was possibly something that another person could do, but not me. So, it was a no-go.
Then I went back to another thought I'd had before. The other thing I had been considering was simply having a second barbell in the center, behind the first one. After scrutinizing my tongue for another 5 minutes or so, I realized that my only obstacle was my tongue web. Then I thought to myself, wait a minute, people have cut their tongue webs before-honestly, how bad can it be to pierce through it then?
I decided I would pierce at the same backward-slanting angle as the other tongue piercing, and pierce right through my tongue web. My rationale was that the skin there would either settle to one side of the piercing or the other, or else on each side. Ultimately, I figured that since it's such a thin piece of skin, it didn't really matter.
I guess this is hard to explain if you're not looking right at my tongue, but trust me, my logic proved to be correct. Since I am weird and quirky, I pierced from the top, down. I decided if it was going to be off-center at all, it would be off-center on the bottom. It was hard lining it up because my first tongue piercing is old enough that the hole is a bit stretched, so the barbell is not as snug. I pushed the barbell down flat with my finger and lined it up that way. Then I matched the slant of the needle to the natural slant of the first piercing, and started to pierce.
I was drooling a lot so it was hard to get the needle through. I sort of pushed my tongue against it, which hurt like a bitch and probably didn't help swelling much, but it did the trick-the needle popped through the other side, narrowly missing the gums of my front teeth. Nice going. I carefully pulled it out enough to put the barbell through and painstakingly screwed the bottom ball on.
Well, I managed to avoid completely taking out my bottom front teeth, but I did experience one unexpected setback: an excessive amount of blood. I guess on my way through, I nicked a vein. Let me just say, I smirk at people who say things like, "Can't you paralyze your tongue, if you hit a nerve, or a vein, isn't that true? Or you'll lose taste sensation!" Oh yeah, that's right. Well folks, life is great, I mean, I can't taste salty food anymore, but my tongue barbell rocks. Ha! Whatever.
Despite this attitude, I still found the blood to be just a little alarming. I rinsed my mouth with cold water until the water ran clear and then got some sterile cotton and wrapped it around my tongue and put as much pressure on it as I could stand. After about 20 seconds, everything was fine. I admired my handiwork in the mirror. It was hard to get a sense of how it really looked because since this piercing is pretty far back in my mouth, the swelling was pretty bad. However, it's been exactly a week and it looks good. It sits differently in my mouth than my older one, but over time it will settle. Today I ate some cookies (my first solid food!) and even drank orange juice with no pain. It's a little sore when I yawn, but only on the bottom part of my tongue.
Basically, the first three days or so were the worst. I lisped a little bit when I talked because of the swelling, and my entire throat hurt. My glands were swollen on the first day and I had a fever that night. But after that short time, it got better. About two days ago, I found it to be less noticeable that I had another piece of metal in my mouth. The swelling has gone down considerably and the nasty, fur-like coating on my tongue is gone (I diluted my Biotene).
Part of the reason I chose to pierce my tongue at this time in my life is because we didn't have much to eat in the house until I went grocery shopping today, so I wasn't missing out on anything special. I would attribute my good healing then, to eating very little, and eating nothing but popsicles, ice cubes, pudding, and lukewarm cream of wheat, because we didn't have much else! I went about 3 days where I hardly ate anything and started to get dizzy, but I drank a lot of fluids and rested when I wasn't in class, and now I can eat solid foods if I eat carefully-I even had pizza tonight.
I have to say, I think my favorite piercing to heal is my tongue, because there's something about it that's so ritualistic and so intensely torturous, you find yourself thinking, "It is SO worth it!" when it's all said and done. You really get an insight into things like eating, talking, smoking, kissing...and the way other people react is always amusing. However, I would not recommend piercing your own tongue unless you consider yourself to be a fairly experienced self-piercer. It's a deceptively tricky piercing and the drooling is just ridiculous!