A little different experience than normal I suppose. I have written about piercings I have had a few times now. So i figured maybe its time for a piercing i performed.
At A Glance Author creature Contact creature@bme.anon When Six months ago Artist Josh Vincent Studio monsters Location San Jose, CA My friend matt and I are always trying to think of odd things, things no one has done before. Be it piercings, practical jokes, or just random stupid crap. So we were sitting around one night and we decided it would be interesting to try a surface piercing on his hand. Two to be exact, going between the bones on the upper part of the hand.
So yeah first things first, size and make the jewelry. I took two 12 gauge 3/4 inch straight barbells and bent them into surface bars. The bends were very small so that the balls would rest on the hand with none of the post showing through. Both bars were also left slightly angled so they wouldn't pull to tight on the skin, since the skin of the hand is not as resilient as most other parts normally pierced. Now the jewelry is ready, time to make some holes.
So the day came, matt showed up at the shop late as usual. Luckily however it gave me time to make sure everything had been autoclaved (I like to do it myself rather than having the shop slave do it). So we got the room ready, pulled the equipment out of the autoclave, jewelry, forceps, and any other equipment that may be needed. Had the stainless dental tray cleaned as always, dental napkin laid neatly over it. I busted out four needles rather than two, considering this was a new piercing for me i wanted to make sure i had enough tools.
Now I brought matt back and we started figuring out the best course of action for the piercing. I used a flashlight to locate veins and things of that nature. Then I had matt wiggle his hand a bit so i could get a feel for where his bones and such moved, I wanted to make sure that the bars wouldn't interfere with the movement of his hand. After this I drew some lines over the bones with the surgical scribe, then measured the length of the bars on to his hand, also measured the distance between bones so we could center them nicely.
So now we know where the holes are gonna be and have a rough idea how its going to look when its done. Honestly i was getting really excited at this point, having never done a piercing like this before. Now i cleaned Matt's hand a bit with some iodine then some saline solution. So here we go, using forceps I pinched up the skin aligning the marks i made for the holes. This was rather easy actually, i was expecting a bit more stubbornness from the skin considering the length of the piercing. So after getting the forceps lined up I simply pierced from from to back, the needle passed through rather easily. I didn't fully remove the needle prior to inserting the jewelry. I grabbed the first bar, lined it up with the flat end of the needle then fed them both through the hole. After this i tightened the ball onto the end of the jewelry and removed the forceps. To my surprise it never bled, not so much as one drop. Well one down, one to go. For the second hole i did the exact same thing as the first, and again no troubles.
Ok the piercing is over, I had matt sit back in the chair and relax while I cleaned up the room a bit. After I had the room cleaned up I asked matt how he was doing. No pain, no blood, no problems. He was able to move his hand normally, and the piercings looked like they had been there for years. All and all i was very pleased with the finished results, and so was matt, now the question was... how long till this thing heals?
Now we wait, and wait we did. After the first week everything was still looking good, no pain, no swelling. However after about two weeks matt started to forget that he had the piercings. Not paying attention, he started to snag them on his jean pockets in his efforts to dig his cell phone out. This started to create some minor irritation and redness. However this went away in only a few days.
After about two months the piercing had completely healed and matt was able to start swapping jewelry. However at this point he was tired of it and decided to remove the piercing for good. Luckily I was able to get some good pictures of it before he took them out. These pictures are already posted here on bme from my old account (hallow). I found it rather amusing that no more than a few weeks after posting the pictures that a few other people tried the same piercing. It was actually really cool to see other people into it, maybe they saw it somewhere else, though I personally have never seen it till i did it.
Anyway, i hope you all enjoy the pictures and my little story here. Also matt and I are currently working on some new piercings that are sure to be rather interesting, so keep watching the updates maybe you will see some new stuff.