At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When A month ago As many other stories on this site, I'll start this one by saying that I have been a fan of piercings for a few years now, but they have always been sort of "tabu" both in my family and in the places I have worked. To further decrease my chances of having any holes in my skin, it turns out that my scarring is awful. Even a small surgery to remove a couple of dark spots left me with scars that had to be injected with steroids and frozen with liquid nitrogen so they would stop growing. All in all, any piercing had been little more than a wish, until last month.
One day I was taking to my girlfriend, who was telling me the story of one of her cousins who had both nipples pierced and a tongue web piercing. Somehow, I had never considered that the mucous membranes in the mouth heals much better than, say, the nose or the ear, and that a tongue web piercing is private enough to hide it from everyone. We kept talking about the subject for a while, and I got quite enthusiastic about the idea. Finally, I could get pierced without worrying about a nasty scar or loosing my job.
That week I called a couple of places to ask about prices, procedures, and everything else, and finally decided to go on a saturday to get my first piercing. My girlfriend had enjoyed the idea of the piercing too, so we were both going to get our tongues pierced. The procedure went quite smoothly. First, the expected anxiety while we waited for our jewelry to be sterilized, and then the procedure itself. I had decided to go first (well, not really, I just lost a bet) so my tongue was cleaned, clamped and then pierced. Surprisingly, the pain was quite bearable! Actually, it was nothing compared to getting your wisdom tooth removed. My girlfriend was next, and she was considerably more scared than me, but in the end everything went perfectly.
The next day I had a weird feeling, like I had done something wrong. Maybe it was because of the scars, maybe because I was afraid anyone would discover that I had a piercing, but I really don't have a nice memory of that day. Anyway, one week later my piercing had stopped hurting, and it felt like it had been there for a long time. I believed that my problem had been solved, and I was actually thinking how many piercings could I get in my tongue web (yes, it is addictive, now I know).
Three weeks after the piercing, my girlfriend decided to change her jewelry. While I had decided to use a curved barbell, she had decided to get a small ring, which turned out to be too uncomfortable. We went to our piercer and bought a small barbell for her, and being there I asked the guy if he could remove my jewelry too, so I could clean it properly (tongue web piercings have the bad habit of accumulating lots of plaque). When he removed my barbell, I realized I had a noticeable scar in my tongue.
The scar was like a small tube surrounding the piercing, and it could be seen without over-stretching my tongue; naturally, those were not very good news. In fact, I decided that it would be better to avoid any more risks and changed my barbell for a small ring without the little balls so I could easily remove it and massage my tongue web. Putting some pressure on the scars had helped me a few times before, so it was worth trying it this time.
A few days passed, and indeed the scar was diminishing in size. However, the ring would always fall while I was eating, so one day I decided to remove it right before lunch. Obviously, I only remembered that I had to put it back on more than an hour after I had removed it, and by that time the hole had closed. This was the end of my piercing.
Right now the scar is quite small, but I don't think it's small enough to get my tongue web re-pierced, at least not for the next few months. Maybe a frenum piercing could be next, I don't know. Probably a larger gauge jewelry could help me heal better, specially because I can remove it more easily and apply pressure to the hole without loosing my piercing less than an hour later. Sadly, I think I'll never get a tongue or a nipple piercing: if even a tongue web left a noticeable scar, what would a tongue piercing do to my speech? I would be glad to hear if anyone has had similar experiences, and has kept their piercing for a reasonably long time.