For me, the beauty of being 18 is not needing permission from your parents to get something pierced. This obviously does not mean that you can avoid the fact of having to have the nasty discussion about the 'dangers of piercings', and other complaints and worries. On some levels they were right, though. It will be harder for me to find a job and my very traditional grandparents will probably have a fucking heart attack if they find out. If.
At A Glance Author Fiona Judith Contact Fiona Judith@bme.anon When A week ago Artist Forgot to ask her name Studio Tribal Trading Location 13 Korvelseweg, Tilburg, Netherlands But anyways, enough of the stupid introduction thing, I went and did it a week ago. Me, my friend and her mother (she's 14, so she needed permission). I had been there before to get my lip pierced about a year and a half ago, but this time there were about 3 people waiting when we got in. So we sat there about an hour, getting excited, and really nervous in my case, hearing some 'ouch' and 'ah' sounds coming from behind the door. We had to fill out some forms, to see if you had diabetes, blood illness, over-sensitivity to metal or immunity disorder. If you had either one or more of them they would refuse to pierce you. Well, I'm allergic to steel, including surgical steel, and metal including tin and nickel. So I lied and didn't write it down. I figured they knew they should only use titanium or niobium or other metal without nickel. I didn't think it would be a problem.
So I finally went into the room with 'the table', the dentist smell and all the shiny instrument things on a plate next to it, which didn't really help with the nervous thing. I let my friend go first, because when I got my lip pierced I had the courage of going first, but fainted afterwards..I'm such a chicken shit. So she sat down and went through the procedure, and held my sweaty hand to pinch in when it hurt. She ended up not pinching at all, which made me less nervous.
When I finally sat down on the table I kept thinking of all the stories I read here and how most of them said that the clamp hurt more then the actual needle sticking through part. I didn't have enough money to get venoms, so I decided to get the right half and start saving money for the other. I had to rinse my mouth with some icky mouthwash, which I would probably get a bottle of to rinse at home. It took some time before she, my piercer, I forgot to ask her name, found a spot where it was 'clear' enough to stick a needle through (and the clamp did really hurt more then the actual needle sticking I figured out later). So she told me to stick my tongue out as far as possible, and bite down a little so it would stay out, because nothing would be more terrible then me sucking my tongue back in when she just got the needle through. And with that scary image in mind she told me to take a deep breath and exhale. To be honest, I didn't feel any pain until she started to put the j ewelry in. For me accidentally biting your tongue while chewing gum would have hurt more then this. Afterwards they gave me another little cup of the mouth wash again, and that stinged..like, ouch.. Stupid desinfecting stuff..which I hate now.
Fortunately, my mother didn't thought it was so repulsive as she had in mind, my father did and now thinks I'm scary. But the hard part wasn't over. My tongue started to swell really bad and I had to eat porridge for the next 3 days, which sucks, 'cause I don't like it. The 4th-8th day my tongue started to itch like hell, which was very frustrating because I couldn't scratch it, it would have hurt. So drinking ice water helped a lot there. One of the nice things is that I lost 2 kilogrammes (about 4 pounds I think) already, very nice indeed, because planned to lose weight. And now it has been 9 days and the swelling has gone completely, still hurts a little when I eat and it started to bleed a couple of hours ago because I accidentally bit on the jewelry because it's way too long now. I think I stretched the hole a little and it must have damaged a vein or something. I'm rinsing with water every half hour now, because I'm out of mouth wash, need to get some more tomorrow. It 'll heal once I rinsed with that I hope. Cause let me tell you, blood doesn't taste well with milk, so...yuck, very yuck. I hope it'll heal, and I certainly hope it didn't began to bleed because I lied about the metal allergy thing. Cause, you know..that's bad karma..
Note: Lying to your piercer about medical conditions is extremely dangerous!!!