| At A Glance | |
| Author | Spacy |
| Contact | Spacy@bme.anon |
| IAM | Spacy |
| When | A month ago |
| Artist | Alex (IAM serenity) |
| Location | Southport, UK |
I put off doing the piercing for quite a while, and then I put on quite a bit of weight. I wasn't happy with myself at that size, and knew I'd diet, so I decided not to do the piercing until I'd lost quite a bit of weight. A year or so later I started to lose the weight, and recently I met a friend that was a pierce who asked if he could do the piercing for me. I'd recently had trouble having the strength to push a 10g needle through my body for my labia piercings. There was no pain; it was just the strength that was a problem. As 4g was so much bigger, and I trusted him piercing me (a lot of people make me uncomfortable piercing me, that's just me, I'm fussy), so I said yes.
We discussed piercing methods, he was keen on dermal punching as when it was taken out it would leave a hole, not a cats arse scar like a needle would. I decided I'd prefer the hole to the cats arse, then scalpeling was suggested. I decided that would be brilliant. He hadn't done a scalpeling before, but I didn't mind being an experiment, and went into it knowing this. I'd decided previously to use EMLA, in case there was lots of fiddling round and because I had a small amount of scar tissue from a previous migrated navel piercing (that had ripped out when I was 15) that made even play piercing painful. So he put the EMLA on my bellybutton under and airtight patch and we left it on for an hour. The patch burst after about half hour, so another patch was put on top, and lots of tape over it this time to strengthen it. While my EMLA was on, my jewelry was autoclaved.
We realized that normal clamps wouldn't fit the jewelry through, so larger clamps were found. The EMLA was taken off, and I was cleaned with technicare. I had my navel marked, I decided I wanted it quite deep inside. The first marks were a bit too deep inside, the second ones weren't deep enough, so a mark was made between the two. I lay down on the piercing bed, and from there I couldn't see a lot because I had to lie down. But from the little I could se of clamps and swaps it was like I was getting a caesarean or someone was doing open surgery on my belly :)
The camps were put on, and then between the marks scalpeled. He'd marked the area to be scalpeled as the 5mm, then a little longer to allow for the circumference of the jewelry to stretch it out. I could feel the sharpness of the scalpel going through, but it wasn't as bad as a needle. It was an odd feeling, like the feeling when someone sticks a finger hard inside your bellybutton, only on the outside of it. Once the scalpel had gone through, a 4g taper was put through which I could hardly feel, then the jewelry inserted. Dina took pictures and showed me them so I could see what was going on. The excess blood was then soaked up with gauze and the o-rings put on. I then looked at it in the mirror and it was so beautiful, I loved it, he'd done a great job. A thick dressing was then put on, which I was told not to remove till the next day. It was also decided it probably wouldn't be best for me to go to work, as my job involves lots of bending and stretching.
Afterwards, not the wisest of ideas, I decided we should go to the pub to celebrate. I only had one vodka, but about an hour or two later I went to the toilet in the pub, came back and there was blood coming out the bottom of my dressing, on my trousers and on my hands. We decided to go back to the studio sharpish, me with loads of tissue stuck in my trousers. We got back, I was cleaned, lots of Vaseline stuck in my bellybutton to stop the blood, and redressed with even more dressing. I started to fell a bit light headed, so had a lie down and we watched a film. An hour or so later my dressing had soaked through again. We thought it might dry out better if the dressing was taken off, so we took it off and it was an icky gooey bloody mess underneath. It wouldn't stop bleeding; my bellybutton kept filling up with blood. All sorts was tried, pressure, clamping, plaster spray. We considered putting in bigger jewelry, but there was nothing long enough as plugs were too short. Alex was trying to stop the blood for an hour or so. It even managed to get splashed up the walls :) After a while I was shaking, and freezing cold. When I went to the toilet, very shakily, I was told to keep talking so that Alex knew I hadn't passed out. It was decided my jewelry should come out so that more pressure could be put on the wound, and because my jewelry was keeping the wound open. I was gutted, but knew it had to be. The bleeding still didn't stop. Dina phoned NHS direct to ask for advice, and they said I should go to casualty whether it stopped bleeding or not, so they sent an ambulance.
The bleeding was a lot less by the time the ambulance came, and I felt a bit silly. I told them I'd done it myself as laws are a bit stupid here. I was freezing in the ambulance, so got wrapped in a blanket. The ambulance lady driving was fine, she said things like 'well, we will do these things' and seemed sort of amused. The guy was quite offish with me though. I told him I'd used EMLA, but he didn't know what it was as we don't have it in this country. I said that it was probably when that wore off that the bleeding started, as it reduces blood flow to the area. He wasn't interested though, and asked me all the questions quite curtly.
When I got to hospital my boyfriend was there. I gave in my details, feeling a bit scared as I saw the notice about self harm having to be reported by the hospital, behind the counter. It was odd answering the questions, because I'd been trained as part of my job to ask them :) I sat shaking wrapped in a blanket for a bit, my dressing soaked with blood again but after a while the bleeding stopped and I stopped shaking. I still hadn't seen a doctor, but I felt really silly for being there, and as everything seemed fine then as there was no more bleeding, I told a nurse I was going home.
I phoned in sick to work the next day, and was too tired to lie to my boss, so told him the truth minus the scalpel and he was fine. It'd stopped bleeding the next day, but didn't looked scabbed, just clotted. The day after that I realized I really should've stayed in casualty and got steri stripped or stitched, as the edges of the wound weren't together and there was still a bit of blood, so it would have trouble healing or scar. So I went to the chemist and bought some steri strips. I soaked my navel to soften it up, and then squeezed the edges of the wounds together and steri stripped them together. The inside one was quite fiddly to do, but it looked a lot better afterwards.
I got a bit worried about whether I'd put on the steri strips correctly or not, as they kept coming apart and it bleeding for a few days. It didn't help that my job involved bending and lifting. I went to see the work nurse, who stripped it up again, and told me to go to my doctor, or an NHS walk in centre. I didn't want to go to my Doctor as there were reasons I didn't want it on my medical records. A day or two after that though, and it was still not healing together, so I went to an NHS walk in centre. The nurse there was very nice. She said it probably should've been stitched at the time. She re-stripped the top hole. She told me that the bottom hole had already started to heal apart, so she left the strips off that hole as it was too late. I left the strips on for another week or so, during which time it started to heal together and the bleeding problem stopped. I also wore a dressing to keep it clean and stop it snagging on stuff.
Its about 2 months now, and its healed. There's more scar tissue at the bottom than the top, but I'm rubbing it every day with vitamin E oil to help get rid of it. The bottom hole looks like a miniature bellybutton :) I 'm hoping it should heal fine so it can be redone, because I loved it. Just next time the scalpel cut will be slightly smaller so that it's stretched slightly when it's tapered. And also, no pub :)