Around 5 months ago now, and after some thought and research, I decided that I wanted to add to the number of my already existing body modifications and go for one of the most common and widely spread body piercings of my generation – I decided to get my navel pierced.
At A Glance Author Belinda Contact Belinda@bme.anon When N/A Studio Jazz u' up Location Campbelltown, NSW So one afternoon I took myself down to my local piercer along with my boyfriend and little sister to get pierced. The shop was empty when we walked in, but once the little bell rang above the door the piercer came out. He was sort of cranky looking and hunched over, and I remember my first impression being that he looked like an older version of Donkey Kong.. Haha. But I had heard that was a renowned piercer with over 30 years experience so I decided not to let that bother me too much. The whole place was very well lit and sterile looking, and without asking me my age or having me sign any sort of consent form (which I found a bit odd) I had picked my blue jeweled belly bar and was lying on down on the bench all marked up and ready to be pierced. By this time of course my pulse was racing, not out of nervousness as much as excitement and anticipation. "Donkey Kong" put on his gloves, clamped up my belly then lined up the needle to the two little purple dots he marked. He told me to take a big breath in then out and count to three, I got to two before the needle went in. I was expecting it to hurt quite a bit, but I can honestly say I didn't feel one ounce of pain! Just sort of a weird popping sensation as it broke through the skin on the other side. I looked down and smiled at the plastic tubing through my skin and watched him slide the jewellery into the fresh piercing and fasten the ball on the top. There was a bit of blood, but he wiped me over and I was fine. He told me to lie there for a few minutes until the bleeding stopped and told me how to clean it and how long it would take to heal and such, and after around 10 minutes I had paid for my piercing and set off home on a high.
When I got home I noticed I had started bleeding again, but just put it down to the new piercing being irritated by me moving around and cleaned myself up as usual. But this kept happening, no matter how many times I cleaned off the blood and thought it had stopped I couldn't make the bleeding stop for more than a day, and were it was clamped was quite badly bruised. I would wake up every morning with my bar caked in dried blood, and when I moved or sat down the scab would crack and start me off bleeding again. After two days of this I went back to the piercer to show him what was happening, he just put it down to irritation as well, because of the spot it was in and the amount of coagulated blood stuck to my jewellery. He cleaned me up again and managed to get all the dried blood off my jewellery, sticky-taped a little cotton pad over my piercing and told me to be extra careful when bending and not to lift anything heavy for a while until it had healed itself enough to stop bleeding. The rest of that day was fine, I thought it had finally stopped and my belly was on its way to recovery, but sure enough, the next morning I woke up caked in blood.
I cleaned it off in the shower, but with every day that passed things seemed to get worse. By this time it was constantly seeping blood, and no matter what I did I couldn't stop it from happening. It looked like the bar was too tight, and it was swollen and bruised and just generally looking horrible, so my boyfriend took me to his piercer this time and got her to take a look at it. She found the bleeding a little worrying but suggested that it could be because of the bar being too small. So she ended up having to put a longer one in for me, which also meant having to shove more plastic tubing in to keep the hole open for the new jewellery.. Which hurt much more than the initial piercing! I felt more at ease with a longer bar, because I didn't have to worry about migration as well as profuse bleeding anymore, haha. Pattie (the piercer.. shes awesome!) told me to be very careful for a few days and come back straight away if the bleeding started up again. My boyfriend and I had just walked back to the car when I looked down and saw that the bleeding had started again, so back we went to Patties. She spent a good 45 minutes with me trying to stop the bleeding before telling me to get myself to a doctor. The bleeding wasn't bad, but constant enough for her to know that it shouldn't have been happening. It turned out that the first piercer had hit a vein and the only way to stop the bleeding was to take out the bar and stitch up the two holes.
So that was it. A local anesthetic and 2 stitches later my belly piercing was gone forever, and 5 months later all that remains is two fading pink dots as a reminder. But don't let this horror story put you off navel piercings, this is nothing more than the experience of one girl with a freak vein were there shouldn't be one! But even after all the trouble and blood loss I don't regret being pierced, and it certainly hasn't put me off being pierced again in the near future!