BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!!

At A Glance Author JD Contact JD@bme.anon Artist Some women with green hair and many facial piercings... Studio Blue Banana, UK Location Devon

Since last summer my friend and I planned to have our navels pierced...but it was only until yesterday that we actually got it done!!! : )

We'd discussed it for aaaaaaagggggggggeeesss and I'd researched everything there possibly was to know...including the really great stuff on this site...(it really pays to research your piercing, that way you know what to expect etc.)

After discusing it with our parents we decided to do it now before my mate went of for her 3 month holiday (dammit)...

We checked out the piercing places (there were quite a few along one street suprisingly!!) and opted on the cheaper but dodgier place...oops...

After filling in the relevent forms and picking our jewellry (we both chose a clear jeweled barbell) they sent us away to get some Lucozade (high energy glucose crappy drink) whilst they autoclaved the jewellry...**before you get pierced, get some sugar into your system else your body can't cope with the adreniline rush and you'll faint** (apparently, so they told us)

Anyway...we came back 20 minutes later and this girl took us up to the piercing room...woooaaahhh!!! Was it small!!! The scary looking piercer (who turned out to be rather cool) asked me to close the door behind me which resembled more of a lose sheet of plastic than a door...The room didn't really look imaculate: there was a worktop and an autoclave (well, I HOPE it was an autoclave) and next to it was a table/bed thing...it was soooo small and pretty scabby too...before we went in we were told that a new sheet would be laid down for every new person and needles disposed of in a sharps container....but I didn't see any sheets or any such container...uh oh....now I started getting scared...

My mate went first (decided after tossing a coin) and I didn't have the guts to look...I'm such a wuss...but then I made the dumb mistake of turning round just as the needle was going in her....aaahhhhh!!! DUH!!! BIG MISTAKE!!! all I saw was this huge red lump and my knees almost gave way, but I think that was the clamps holding the skin...still, it was a gross site...

Her needle was a fresh one but I saw it just chucked into a bin of somesort with a plastic lining...great....We had to choose the dodgy place...well, at least we were being pierced with a fresh needle everytime, and clean gloves for every person...still...the word dodgy, VERY DODGY sprang to mind...

Okay...so now she's done and gets off the table with a cool new gem in her belly...but now it's my turn...help!!

Before the piercing I was really calm, but by now my left foot was shaking uncontrollably!! I was so nervous I felt like backing out and running away, but then I knew I'd be letting my friend down...

The piercer marked me up with a purple pen,

and then cleaned my belly, but she didn't really do much, just swabbed it with some cloth (by now I'm wishing I'd paid £10 more for the prossional piercers just down the road....)

Next I laid down on the sheetless table/bed thing and she clamped me up...by this point I was squeezing my mates hand HARD....then along came the needle....this time I squeezed my nails into her hand, and now my whole leg was shaking like hell!!!

I told her not to tell me when the needle was going in, but I could sense it anyway....in goes the needle and I felt this sharp pinching pain, and could feel the needle digging into my skin and popping out the other side (NOT an nice experience, but not as bad as having your teeth out, I can tell you)

she put in the barbell and screwed it inplace...the whole process took longer than the "few seconds" people make it out to be... I only looked when she told me to stand up....but it looked pretty cool (ish)

It's now been a day since I got it done and I'm having my regrets....I really really love how it looks but it keeps bleeding and it's painful to sit, bend, walk etc......basically, I can't even put my own socks on....I'm thinking of taking it out,but then I don't have much patience cos I can't be bothered to wait a few days for it to settle down!!! Everytime I move, it bleeds. If I clean it, it bleeds again afterwards...I've read all about whitish stuff crusting over but not about blood crusting over!!! Maybe it's just forming a scab and new tissue is forming underneath, I don't know!!! But all I do know is that the blood is annoying me and I'm regreting having it done, but then if I take it out I'll regret it even more!! OOOWWWWWWW!!!! I just moved!!! That hurt!!! I'm also getting paranoid that the piercer positioned it wrong, that it's gonna migrate or something...oooohhhhh!!! It's so painful I feel like taking it out...Now I wish I hadn't had it done because I wouldn't have known how cool it would have looked....damn