At A Glance Author Rachel Contact Rachel@bme.anon IAM delusionalfairy When Three months ago Artist Zak Studio Mainstreet Tattoos Location Edgewood, MD A few months back I got my navel pierced 14 gauge and had a ton of problems with it, which led me to the decision to remove it. After it was healed I decided to get it redone 10 gauge style. Because I never really wanted a 14 gauge navel piercing, I had always wanted a larger gauge one. And when the 14 gauge didn't work out it just seemed like fate that I was supposed to get something that was bigger and better.
I went to my main man, Zak to get my navel pierced for the second time. I chilled around the parlor for awhile, because the shop is about an hour away from me, so whenever I go up there I always make sure to spend plenty of time there. When I said I was about ready to get pierced he autoclaved everything. Once everything was all clean and sterile he proceeded to mark up my navel . The great thing about Zak is that he is so careful to make sure things are perfectly straight.
I laid on the table and thought about the first time I got it pierced. It was a pain in the ass and was not pleasant at all. The situation in short was something like this: I had an apprentice attempt to pierce it but she couldn't do it, she just managed to pinch and poke at it for 10-15 minutes before giving up and letting the actual piercer do it. But there were no hard feelings because they were my friends. But my navel was seriously bruised for quite sometime after the initial piercing which obviously made it more painful then it should have been.
Zak was lining things up. I hate when he does that because he always takes the jewelry and shoves it into my skin really hard. This despite what you may think hurts more then getting the actual piercing itself. I asked him if he had to do that because he knew it hurt me and he said he was almost done. And of course I said to him that he just lives to hurt me. He denied that, of course. But I just think he lives to cause me pain and anguish.
He asked if I was ready and I was. He said breathe in and breathe out. He shoved the needle through. Oh My God! It hurt 10 times more then the first time.
I relayed that thought to Zak, and he said "Yea well you just had a 10 gauge needle shoved through your navel." Then we discussed that I also had a lot of scar tissue from the first time. When I say a lot I do mean it, it was purple and hard. So that's another reason it hurt so much.
I left the shop a happy chicky, even though I could barely move my stomach without agonizing pain. And for about a week I couldn't lay on my stomach, much like the first time I had it pierced.. And I could just forget wearing jeans with a belt. I was constantly pulling up my pants because of this. The belt just kept hitting my piercing and it hurt so much. You never realize how much something touches a part of your body until you get it pierced.
Things were going well. I took care of it the best I knew how. But it kept getting worse and worse. It started oozing and aching. I called Zak immediately and said my belly button was broken and he asked what happened. I explained the oozing and blood. He asked if it looked like the insides had exploded outwards. Yes, yes that's exactly how it looked. He said it was infected and I should get to a doctor.
So I called my mom and she set up an appointment for me; two days later I went to the doctor and explained what happened. Unfortunately this was my first time meeting this doctor, good first impression, eh? I thought so. Hi doc, my name is Rachel, my belly button is oozing. But she was really nice about it. So that was good. She gave me an antibiotic which did absolutely nothing for it. Luckily she also prescribed me some Bactroban and worked greatly. I was pleased that it finally stopped oozing and bleeding and just looking plain gross.
That was about 2 months ago and now my navel is doing much better. Although it is still blah a lot of time. It looks happy some days and when its unhappy woe is me because it hurt so much. There are times when I can't lay on my stomach. I think I might just not be capable of having a navel piercing.