I could easily just jump right in with just the experience of my re-pierced nipples. i.e: I went here, paid this, signed here, blah, blah, blah. However, there is a lot of reason attatched to having mine re-pierced. If you want some short, sweet, mindless piercing story, move on. This is different. It's hard to know where to start so I suppose I'll start with the beginning of my summer.
At A Glance Author Frank Contact Frank@bme.anon IAM FRANK When A month ago Artist Chris Patterson Studio Ace-In-The-Hole Location Dallas In May of 2006, I was involved in a drunk driving accident. My "friend" plowed into a mini-van head on which sent me flying into the windshield of his 2-seater Toyota. (I was not driving/not at fault.) I suffered many critical injuries: broken femur, neck, wrist, ribs, collapsed lung, and head trauma. Needless to say, all of my piercings (septum, monroe, ¾ lobes, inverse navel, standard navel, and both nipples) were removed that night before surgery. A steel rod the length of my femur was placed inside the bone to stabilize it since the break was too high up in my hip to be set with a cast.
I stayed in the hospital for a month to heal and spent 2 weeks in physical therapy to relearn to walk. My body was ravaged and I was altered. Altered in ways that I had no control over. I did not like this. One glorious day, I was released from the hospital. I would still be confined to my bed at home for another 2 months but at least I wasn't confined to a hospital bed anymore. At home, I started to try to get back to normal, and the first step back to normalcy was trying to get back my piercings. I couldn't control A LOT of things about myself but the piercings were at least something. I reopened my septum, and my plugs slipped into my ears easily. My monroe and both navel piercings quickly returned as well but the nipples were completely closed. I felt incomplete and very weird.
Fast forward a couple months and I was almost completely recovered besides sporting a gnarly limp and facial scarring. I knew with time, the scars would heal and honestly I still don't care if they don't. I started thinking about my nipples and how much I missed them. I talked to 2 close friends from work and I decided I wanted them redone and they wanted to go for support because they knew that it was a big deal to me.
That night, we were milling around downtown checking shops. I went into about 5 of them because I wanted to talk to different piercers before I decided on one. I decide to go with Chris Patterson at Ace-In-The-Hole. Very cool guy, very clean shop. All in all, very professional and down to earth. So he began setting up and I will admit I was nervous as hell. My palms were leaking. He said he was ready, so me and my two girlfriends all went to his room. He told me to lose the top so I did and I let him mark me. He noticed the scars from the old piercings and I told him the whole story about why I lost them in the first place. I checked out the marks, approved and lay down on the table, with one friend on either side holding a hand. This was going to hurt and I knew it but I was so ready for it that I didn't care.
The needle went in the first nipple with extreme resistance. I could tell he was straining a little against all that scar tissue. I won't lie and try to act hard, because it hurt. It hurt a lot. I felt bad for my friends, hoping I hadn't crushed the bones in their poor hands. The second one was comparable to the first. By that point i think my body had just kind of given up and let it all happen because I knew it was going to be worth it. He finished putting the jewelry in and I lay there for a bit since i tend to get a little light-headed after a piercing. He turned a fan on me, which was really nice and applauded me on my ability to be able to handle the re-piercing without screaming or fainting.
I finally stood up to check them out. They were perfect. I gave him his tip which he said wasn't necessary at all, but my eyes started welling up with tears and I explained it was totally necessary because it was a very big deal to me considering my recent circumstances.
Surprisingly, healing them has been drastically different than the first time around. They rarely ooze, and they aren't sore. I just wash them with foam dial soap daily, drop some emu oil on them to keep them moisturized, and they haven't given me any problems whatsoever.
I am 100% satisfied with my decision to have them redone, and big thanks goes to Chris Patterson in Dallas. I feel like I am finally returning to normal and my body has finally been reclaimed.