A really bad eyebrow experience
At A Glance Author loubealou Contact loubealou@bme.anon IAM loubealou When Two years ago Artist Geordie Studio Area51 Location Newbury, UK So let me just set the scene. This all takes place about two years ago in a studio that I worked in at the time called Area51. My direct boss and the guy who owned the studio is called Duncan. I started working as his apprentice tattoo artist with only a couple of tattoos and two body piercings (labret and navel) and didn't have any intention to get any more piercings as I know I don't react well to them. So I had been working at Area51 for about three months when a new piercer is recruited as the current piercer (Geordie) wanted to become the shop manager. Enter the lovely Heidi.
Heidi and I got on from the moment she arrived for her interview. Being the apprentice most of my day was filled with the jobs that Duncan didn't want to do and meeting and greeting the applicants for the piercing job was one of them. Heidi accepted an offer of coffee but actually got off her bum and made it herself (and offered to make drinks for the rest of the staff) which meant that the interview was merely a formality and she got the job (employment by staff vote rocks!).
So the day that Heidi started work Duncan asked every member of staff what piercings they would like and offered to give us all jewelry if we let Heidi pierce us. Being game for a laugh and able to control my pain responses I let Heidi have a go at my ear lobes with a box of canulars. I wasn't scared as Geordie was talking her through every action she made and although he had never pierced me I had been watching his "interesting" piercings since I started working with him. I was surprised at how easily she picked up the method of what she was doing and how little pain she inflicted as she pushed the canular through. The only problems she was having related to throwing bits of jewelry across the room as she wasn't used to wearing latex gloves (it was very funny to watch her scrabbling over the floor). I felt quite proud to be Heidi's first client.
Then my morning fun was over and it was back to the grind stone, cleaning the tattoo area, preparing new needles, making transfers you know the sort of thing. At the end of the day Duncan asked Heidi how she thought she was doing. Heidi explained that there were a number of common piercings that she hadn't seen done yet including the tragus and the eyebrow. Duncan asked Heidi if she minded staying after work and when she said she didn't he hauled me off upstairs for a "Chat." It went along the lines of "I've let you tattoo me now you have to let Heidi stick needles in you. Do you want a tragus or an Eyebrow?" So still being up for a laugh I agreed to let her pierce my eyebrow.
I went back into the piercing room (by now it is 11 o'clock at night and have been working since 9 in the morning) Geordie tells Heidi that he will go through the procedure until the point of piercing then he will stop, clean me up and then she will do the same but actually put the needle through. He started off with a mini lecture on placement and to be honest I just switched off, shut my eyes and dreamed of my bed. I felt him mark and clamp me and then take the clamp off. Heidi was asking something about clamping but I still wasn't paying attention. Heidi had a few goes at clamping me but something wasn't right and she couldn't get the clamp to stay on. She and Geordie de-gloved and started messing around clamping bits of me. I wasn't bothered at all, Geordie was just showing Heidi how to use a clamp.
Finally Heidi decided she was ready for another go. And for the third time that day I was marked for an eyebrow piercing. Heidi had several goes clamping me and again the bloody thing fell off. Geordie was loosing his patients, he pulled the clamp out of Heidi's hand and said "look she is scowling just get hold of her face like this (grabs handful of eyebrow) Clamp it like this (shoves a clamp onto my face) and do this (forces canular into eyebrow)"
And my God, the pain! It was terrible as the canular went through my skin I could hear a popping noise and it was agony. I sat still whilst Geordie pulled a bar through my new hole but it hurt like hell. As soon as the jewelry was in Geordie left the room and Heidi confessed that she had heard the popping too but to her it had sounded more like cracking.
By the time I got home it was just a dull ache but when I looked at myself in the mirror it was so pretty I couldn't be angry with Geordie. It happened to work out that Geordie and I didn't work on the same days for the rest of the week so I didn't see him until the following Monday (about 4 days later) When I saw Geordie again I managed to get him on his own and ask if my eyebrow was still supposed to be hurting. He said "No, it shouldn't really hurt at all unless you knock it." He had a look at the piercing and for me it was doing well, no discharge no reddening of the skin. It wasn't until Heidi and I spent lunch together and I confessed to her that I was still in pain that anybody bothered to look properly at my eye. When I shut my eye it was clearly bruised on the eyelid following the rim of the eye socket. Never mind I thought, the bruising will go down. So I left it alone and went on with my daily cleaning regime.
My husbands family were on holiday when I had my eyebrow pierced and sent me an eyebrow bar from France. It was really pretty with coloured ceramic ends but it was too small. I took it into work to try and find a longer bar which would still fit the ceramic ends but it seemed to be a slightly different size to everything we had in the shop. In the end because I knew I was going to see the family-in-law (about 10 days after it was done) I put in the too small bar. Within twelve hours my bruise was back. And this time it was clearly visible. The whole of the top of my eye was black like I had been punched. My husband insisted that I took it out there and then.
After about two months my eye had stopped oozing fluid from the puncture wound and seemed to be healed. But I have been left with and ugly scar that (typically for me) has a hair growing out of one of the ex-holes. And the hair grows bent in the middle!
So this tale has several morals, don't let anybody talk you into having a piercing. Don't do it in a rush and take out any piercing which is still painful when your piercer tells you it shouldn't be. Even if you know a piercer well and trust them, if they are having a bad day walk away. And when all is said and done if it isn't working out take it out!
It would be nice if, now that I have told you about what happened to me this was a unique experience and I must stress that the circumstances surrounding it were very unusual but even common piercings can go wrong and that can happen anywhere and at any time. Treating piercings with common sense can go along way to stopping these problems such as researching where you are going to get the piercing but if I had taken the piercing out when it had only been in for a few days I perhaps wouldn't have such a big (hairy) scar. Pain is after all your body's way of telling you something is wrong.