It all began around the time I turned 16. I had begged and begged my mother for weeks to take me to have my belly button pierced. I had already picked out the specific jewelry I wanted to put in it once it had healed and had convinced my mom that it was not nearly as big of a deal as she was making of it. She finally agreed that we would go for my birthday as long as my dad did not find out. I called around for pricing and came up with varying results.
At A Glance Author cat eyes Contact cat eyes@bme.anon When A year ago Artist Anndie Studio Lost Souls Tattoo Location Houston, Texas One place would do it for $25 but they were located all the way across Houston and my mom did not want to bother driving that far. There was only one place close in town that was less than $40 but they required the notarized signature of both parents as I was but a wee minor. That was not going to happen so I had to deal without having a hole punched in my belly button.
Then a brilliant idea struck me,(brilliant for an ill-advised 16 year old at least), and I decided to try piercing it myself. So I got my ice and my sewing needle and an earring and went about the task of inflicting scar tissue upon my poor navel.
At first, the ice kept melting on my skin so I tried to shove the needle through anyway...bad idea. It hurt like hell and I could only wriggle the needle through about 3/4 of the way. I could even see the tip of it through the bottom layer of skin, but it hurt too bad for me to push it through. So, like an idiot, I walked around for a few days with a plain ear stud poking out of the top of my navel, just sitting inside the tiny dent I had made.
Then I decided to go through the bottom instead and meet up through the top hole, which might have worked had my placement not been so far off. This resulted in me having 2 separate knots of scar tissue on my navel, one inside, one outside. After all this trauma to my innocent belly button, I decided to give it a rest. So a few months went by and I did not touch it.
Finally, in a last desperate act a few months later, I worked up the courage to push a hole safety pin through it. That lasted about 2 days. My dad saw it one day protruding from one of my tee shirts and I confessed. He was not as angry as I had anticipated, but he did explain to me the danger of putting nickel-coated metal inside your body. After some coaxing I finally agreed to take it out.
A year and a half went by without me tampering with my delicate mess of a navel but the desire for metal through my tummy never fully went away. I began plotting my professional piercing for my approaching 18th birthday. I saved some money, picked out a spot, bought some jewelry and went for it.
I ended up deciding on Lost Souls because the guy who answered the phone to give me pricing was pretty cool. I went in around 10pm and waited for about an hour. I filled out necessary paperwork, picked my barbell,and they copied my driver license. A little blonde girl with multiple piercings and an ornate sleeve took me to a back room and marked the hole for placement, (with some difficulty I might add as I had scarred the hell out of myself), cleaned the area, and lay me down. She told me to count to ten and take a deep breath as she worked it in. The initial pain was sharp but minimal. The soreness lasted for a week.
I went home and began the healing process. I cleaned it regularly, only bumped it a few times, and rotated my jewelry daily. The oozing never stopped though, nor did the redness go away. In fact, it only got worse. I went to ask her about it while I had my tattoo design drawn, and she said I wasn't caring for it properly and she clean it more thoroughly. I took her advice and continued to wait for it to heal.As time went on, it got more red and the edges of the hole even became crusty. It oozed reddish-yellow fluid and finally greenish-yellow fluid. It simply did not get better. I kept cleaning it and hoping it would improve. It got so bad that right before I took it out, it had actually begun growing out of my body. The amount of tissue in the piercing actually decreased until I could finally see the metal of the barbell through my skin.
Unfortunately, I had failed to remember a small fact about myself that didn't occur to me until I had my cartilage pierced and it began behaving in a less serious but similar way. On a whim I took out the cheap stud I had in my cartilage and replaced it with a solid gold one. It healed completely and immediately. I began to remember the itching that used occur whenever I wore cheap earrings and how my toes swelled a little when I put cheap metal on it. I am allergic to cheap metal, basically anything but gold and sterling silver.
I learned the hard way never to do it yourself and just how important it is to monitor infection and know your body. The scar that is left on my navel is so unsightly and I have so much scar tissue that I plan to have a tattoo put there to cover it up and if I ever dreamed of having a pierced belly button again, I would have to have the bottom done instead.