Conch- a pierce and a punch

At A Glance Author Mars Contact Mars@bme.anon Artist Anon/Luis Studio Anon/Infinite Location Philly

The first inner conch piercing I ever saw was on the guy who pierced my tongue. He had labret studs in them, and I was instantly in love with the piercing. I thought about it for a while, but it seemed like there was always something else that I was more interested in piercing. Then I came to the realization that I was putting it off because I was terrified of that piercing. The cartilage there is SO thick, and something kept telling me that it had to be extremely painful.

I had talked to a friend of mine who is a piercer, about inner conch piercings several times. Well I guess one day he was tired of hearing me ask about it, and he told me to sit down in the chair. I became extremely nervous as we talked about gauge and jewelry choice. I hadn't been that nervous for any of my previous piercings, not even my triangle. I decided to start the whole breathing exercises before he even marked my ear or took out any supplies. I really wanted a 10ga labret stud in my ear, but this particular piercer doesn't like to use anything other than CBR's in conch piercings. We finally agreed on the correct placement, and by that time the deep breathing had really helped calm me down. He asked me if I was ready and I said yes. I took a deep breath in, and as I let it out I heard a tiny pop. I was so surprised I actually yelled "THAT was IT?!?! THAT is what I was SO nervous about?" I swear I barely felt it. I only had a tiny drop of blood in my ear, and the piercer was quite surprised that it was a lot less than most people.

Sleeping that night was another story. I sleep on my side, and every time I rolled over I woke up. The next day it felt like the ring was soldered into my ear; I couldn't move it at all. I didn't force it to move, and kept it clean with soap, water and saline. After about a month and a half I developed some hypertrophic scar tissue. I was worried that it would never go away, but I kept taking good care of it, and slowly but surely it shrunk to nothing. Using that ear to talk on the phone was still painful after several months, so I decided to switch to a barbell even though it wasn't completely healed yet. I talked to a few piercers, and they agreed that it was probably the best thing for me to do at that point. The moment I took the CBR out and put the barbell in, my ear thanked me. I have had no problems with it since then, and I only get a little bit of lymph every once in a while.

After I got the barbell for my conch, I decided I really wanted to get the other one done too, but this time I wanted it dermal punched. I originally wanted it done at 6ga, but looking at other 6ga conch punches, I decided that was too small. I drove up to Infinite on my day off from work and talked to Luis. They didn't have any 4ga single flare SSS earlets, so I got a pyrex plug instead. I sat around the shop until it was finished being autoclaved. Luis' friend John was hanging around the shop, and he had never even heard of a dermal punch, and was very interested in the idea. He asked Luis if he could watch, and Luis said it was ok with him as long as it was ok with me. I never really had any one watch me get pierced before, but I thought it was cool that he was so interested in it, so I said ok. We went into the piercing room and I began to get nervous. I always get nervous when trying something new. John offered to hold my hand, and I was glad he did because it helped me relax a little bit. Luis marked the spot, and it was perfect. I felt some pressure and heard a crunch, and then a tiny little pinch as he twisted to punch to get the last bit of skin off. He used one q-tip to clean up the blood, he was also pretty surprised about how little I bled.

I could sleep on my punch that same night. Healing has been amazingly fast, I'd say it's healing twice as fast as the pierced conch. I think I might go back and have Luis punch the other side at 2ga. Just a bit of advice, if you are afraid of the dermal punch, don't be. I think it hurt less than a piercing, and healing is so quick and easy. For cartilage piercings it really is the best way to go.