A second tongue piercing? Brilliant! Why hadn't I thought of it before? Sure, forget about the fact that I'd hated every second of the healing of my first tongue piercing, the fact that even one was uncomfortable enough, and I had a sneaking suspicion that my teeth were already eroded – but hey, why not? I had nothing to lose.
At A Glance Author Sarah Contact Sarah@bme.anon IAM porcelina When N/A But who to do the piercing? The answer came to me when I was speaking to one of my friends online and she said that she needed to learn how to do a tongue piercing as she was an apprentice piercer and hadn't yet had the opportunity to pierce a tongue. Perfect, my problem was solved.
A couple of days later I decided to head down to her work and get my tongue pierced. I'd decided to get it done at 10ga to match my other one, and it would go behind the current one as it had been pierced too close to the tip to even think about having another one in front.
Sounded all fine and dandy. I sat in the chair and she marked up my tongue with the help of one of the other piercers there. After lots and umm-ing and ahh-ing and doing tongue aerobics the placement was decided and I laid back in the chair and prepared myself.
One, two, three... oh dear. There wasn't enough room behind the other piercing for the clamps to stay in place properly, and with all the waiting while I was being marked up my tongue was not particularly receptive to having a needle poked through it. Take two: no, it still didn't want to be pierced. She got the needle halfway through, but it just refused to go any further. Hmm, I was beginning to think that my plans to get another tongue piercing were going to be thwarted.
I sat back in the chair getting dizzy and light-headed from the fact that there was half a hole in my tongue and it was bleeding profusely. Something told me that today was probably not a good idea to make another attempt at it, so I left and promised that I'd be back, that she hadn't scared me away!
That night, I was online again and had another blinding flash of brilliance – venoms! Why hadn't I thought of this before? They could go next to my current piercing, therefore taking away any problems of there not being enough room. Plus, how incredibly cool would I be with 3 tongue piercings (I know, I know... its pathetic but that's how I used to think).
So, a couple of days later I went back again. Yet again, the marking took forever. As it was her first time piercing a tongue everything was done slowly and meticulously, and it was a much more complicated piercing than a standard central tongue.
This time, in the hopes of making things a little easier, I decided to go with 14ga. I figured I could always stretch up later.
So after it was all marked and perfect, I laid back in the chair again and tried to prepare myself. Was I insane for doing this? Oh yes, but sometimes you do silly things and just hope you won't regret it later.
So, after lots of readjusting of clamps and wiping of drool, I was ready to be pierced. I felt the needle slide through the first piercing, felt the cannula being cut and then finally the jewellery being threaded through. It was nowhere near as bad as the first tongue piercing that I'd had, and I'll admit that I barely even felt it.
The second piercing was slightly worse because I was already fired up on adrenalin because my body knew what to expect. It wasn't excruciating pain by any means, it was just very uncomfortable.
My tongue was throbbing terribly after the piercings were done, so I gulped down some Nurofen and a lot of cold water to make an attempt at keeping the swelling down. It didn't help in the slightest. The swelling with my venoms was a million times worse than with my central piercing, I had been pierced with 18mm bars and within 24 hours they had been swallowed up by my tongue – I honestly thought that I was going to choke to death in my sleep from how swollen my tongue had become. It was impossible to talk or eat, and breathing was difficult. Looking back on it now I wish that I'd taken out the piercings as what was happening then was nothing compared to the complications that would arise later.
After about 3 days of this, I ended up going back and getting 22mm bars put in instead in the hopes that by having less pressure on the piercing, the swelling would go down. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened and the swelling in fact got worse because now it had an extra 4mm of space to play with.
My tongue continued to stay swollen for approximately 6 weeks, it eventually went down enough so that I could eat and talk properly however it was continually painful and my tongue ached constantly. Most normal people would probably have given up on the piercing by now, but I was stubborn. Or stupid, take your pick.
After the swelling finally went down, I had a whole new set of problems. I had huge masses of scar tissue surrounding both piercings, which impaired movement of my tongue and made talking very difficult – I could speak clearly enough to be understood, however the movement of my tongue made talking a very painful experience so I tried to minimise unnecessary talking.
Fast forward to about 4 months after I had my venoms pierced, and the problems still weren't solved. It was swollen, lumpy, achy, and disgusting looking (I had a huge lumpy bit of scar tissue hanging off the bottom of one of them, it looked like a second tongue. Not something you'd like to show off!). I knew they weren't going to heal so one night I'd just had enough and I took them out. No more venoms, they obviously weren't for me.
I was afraid that the swelling and scar tissue wouldn't disappear but within a few days all the scarring was gone, the "second tongue" had been reabsorbed and my tongue was back to normal probably within 2-3 weeks.
I was very lucky that these piercings didn't cause any lasting damage to my tongue, I should've taken them out from the beginning but I was stupid and kept thinking they would heal. Some piercings may just be problematic, others never heal.
I know a lot of people have had great success with venom piercings, but it is not a piercing to be entered into lightly. I had treated them like a common tongue piercing and received huge problems in return. They require a great deal of care and attention, and constant aftercare. I became lazy after a few days of rinsing my mouth and stopped rinsing after every meal, and I started smoking again after a week. I had mistakenly believed that as I had done that with my central piercing, I could do it again with my venoms and I was very wrong.
I would have to say that my venoms were the most disastrous piercing I had ever had. I know that I am to blame for some of the problems due to my laziness with the aftercare and the fact that I rushed into the piercings too soon after my first attempt when my tongue was already terribly swollen, but I also have to remind people that this is NOT a piercing that should be attempted by someone who has never even done a central tongue piercing before – I put my faith in my friend and I know she did the best job she possibly could but I should never have let her try this before she had gotten a few more months experience in tongue piercings.
So overall, I wish I'd never gotten my venoms pierced. My teeth are permanently damaged and chipped from the amount of jewellery I was trying to cram into my mouth. It was an interesting experience, but one I would never try again and, if I was silly enough to consider it, I'd make sure that next time I'd take out the piercings at the first sign of trouble – not waiting for months on end in the hopes that they would fix themselves up.