I've been a fan of body modifications since I first saw them, and I've always wanted tattoos and piercings. The only "original" piercing I've had is my labret: I got it when they weren't very popular in my city.. at least, that I knew of. I've also had my eyebrow, my navel, and two cartilage piercings that were supposed to have turned into an industrial. Nothing very unique, but all things I really liked.
At A Glance Author Lacykitten Contact lacykitten@gmail.com When A month ago Artist Sondra Musa Studio The Arthouse Inc Location Calgary, Alberta Recently, I met a girl, Tracy, that I've been talking to online for ages. She moved to my city in August, but due to chemotherapy, we hadn't been able to meet until around a month ago. I was psyched to meet her and we got along great.
She'd shown me pictures of her nape piercing before, and when I saw it in person I fell in love with it. We were at coffee with my friend Bill, and another guy, and I was shaking my head in thoughtful resignation: I'd never be able to stand the pain of a nape piercing. They look cool, they're not very common – she's the first person I've ever seen with one – and I really like it! But no way.
The next few days had me thinking. My sickness had been a long road: September 2004 was when I first got sick. The months between September and the end of March 2005 were filled with lots of blood tests, some ultrasounds, CT scans, and a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. Now, if you know nothing about bone marrow tests, I'll let you in on a little secret:
There Is No Worse Pain on This Earth.
No one told me this beforehand – in fact, my friend Kyle's mom is a nurse and has heard that they're worse than child birth, but he blatantly lied to me about how bad it would be until afterward. You see, they shove a huge needle into your hip bone, and suck out the marrow and whatnot. It HURTS LIKE A MOFO. And then it hurts for days to weeks afterward. I couldn't sit for two weeks without almost crying, and for a month afterward it felt like my hip was going to give out.
At the end of March I had surgery for ovarian cancer, and a few months later I started the long trek of eight months of chemotherapy. I lost my hair, my eyebrows, and got really, really good at throwing up and living on juice, bananas, and peanut butter toast.
Throughout my treatment, I was pondering what I wanted to get done. A commemorative tattoo, yes, but... it'd have to be perfect.
So, the days following my encounter with Tracy and her Hot Sexy Nape Piercing, I thought about it. I needed to do something major, something hardcore (for me at least!), something wicked and awesome. I thought, "Hell, if I could stand a bone marrow aspiration/biopsy, a surgery that killed my stomach muscles for months afterward, and eight months of chemo... what in the world makes me think I couldn't take a needle???"
The first pay from my first job post-chemo, my buddy Bill picked me up and we cruised to the bank, cashed my check, and went down to Kensington – the artsy, funky neighbourhood where the tattoo and piercing parlour that I got my eyebrow done at lives. I went in, and asked them if they did nape piercings. After a wait, I was told that they had the supplies, but the piercer who could do a nape piercing wasn't in that day.
I couldn't wait to get it done, I'd lose my nerve, I knew it. I had the adrenaline rush that you get when you've made a decision that you're freaked out about, I could feel my blood coursing though my veins in a rush to dizzy me up. There was another tattoo and piercing shop just down the street, and I decided to check them out. I was so nervous, so eager, that I could barely walk up the stairs and into the building.
The Arthouse, Inc. shares a floor with a gym. There's a little bird in the corner of the waiting room, and these really funky wood carving photographs of suspensions on the walls. There were three young teens there, braiding each others' hair and talking. A guy had come back in to show the piercer that his hip surface piercings were healing well. They did nape piercings and I signed my sheet and waited to be called up.
We sat down and I leafed through the flash art books – incidentally, finding the inspiration for my celebratory "I beat cancer!" tattoo – and watched the other people in the shop. Then they called me, and we went into a little alcove and Sondra, the piercer, pulled the curtain around.
She had me twist, turn, bend and bob my neck fifty thousand times to determine the placement of the piercing. I have a crease in my neck, so she wanted to make sure that the piercing would sit properly and not get irritated, so that it would hopefully not reject as easily as it might otherwise. She debated where to put the bar, what would be too high or too low, where it would be good to add to if I so desired. I told her that I'd seen some cool multiple nape piercings here on BME, and she said she'd love to work on something like that. Now I've got future plans.
Marked and checked in the mirror, I laid down on the bed with my head hanging over the edge. Then I asked to see the needle – my morbid curiosity, I guess. But I was curious how big a guage it was. During my chemo, I had to get a shot called Zoladex, which puts you into a temporary menopause so that the eggs in your ovaries are less likely to be affected by the chemotherapy drugs. It was a HUGE needle that I had to get every 3 months – so three times. Big, scary needle stabbed into my stomach. I knew it was bigger than the 14g I had had my lip, eyebrow, and ear pierced with, and since she was piercing with a 12g, I wanted to compare the size of it. (As a side note, the Zoladex needle was bigger than a 12g needle. SHUDDER.)
I hung my head over the edge of the bed, and clutched at the corners desperately. I was starting to rethink the whole neck piercing idea. 'A surface piercing? It's just going to reject anyway, isn't it? That's what everyone says. But no, Tracy's had her's for ages and it looks great. It's going to hurt. Is it going to hurt? My lip didn't hurt. My eyebrow didn't really hurt. My cartilage tried to kill me it hurt so bad. Neck? Oh man. Maybe this isn't such a good --'
Then, Sondra was telling me to take a deep breath in and out and she was shoving the needle into my neck. Too late to back out now! It hurt a lot, much more than I expected it to. I guess that neck skin is pretty thick and tough, which I hadn't really considered before this endeavor. It felt like it took forever. I was dragging ragged breaths in and shoving them out through my teeth, my eyes alternately squeezing shut and bulging wide. I could feel Sondra's fingers slowly moving along my neck as she guided the needle through. Strangely, as it went through my neck, it felt like it was poking on the exit spot the whole time. I was coherent enough to notice that and think how weird it felt. I could feel it traveling through my neck, millimeter by millimeter. Then she warned me to take another deep breath, breathe out, and out it came through the other side.
Well, that's a bit of a lie. Out she shoved it, in all it's painful glory.
Don't get the impression that she was rough. Far from it. But it takes a lot of force to get a needle through your neck skin... or it did for me, at least. And boy, did it hurt. I kept sucking at the air through my teeth. The pain went away, slowly ebbing. It felt like I was not watching the tide go out on a beach, but I was the beach and feeling the water drifting away. I couldn't feel her adjust the bar or tighten the balls, and I imagine that the area was sort of numb. I bled quite a bit, but that stopped pretty quickly.
I was a little dizzy when I sat up, but after panting like a greyhound on a lure course, I expected that. It also went away pretty fast, and then I felt awesome.
I did it. I got my nape pierced! I looked in the mirror and did a little dance and crowed "woot!" quite happily (and loudly. I bet the people outside the curtain thought I was a pretty big geek. "woot" indeed.). Sondra gave me some aftercare instructions, a packet of sea salt, and then I went off to pay.
So my warning to anyone contemplating this piercing: it hurts. Hurt worse than any of my other piercings. Hurt worse than my tattoo. However, if you've had a bone marrow test, you'll be laughing. It's all relative. People keep asking me if it hurt, and I scrunch up my nose, glance at the ceiling, raise my eyebrows, and reply, "Iiiiiiiii guess it did, but, well, once they've shoved a needle into your bone, nothing else really hurts." But, if you don't handle pain too well, I'd recommend going for somewhere else. This is a painful piercing, and a very LONG one. It's not a quick stab through pinched flesh. There's no clamp holding the skin of your neck into one easy-to-pierce-through piece. It's a slow process as the piercer feels their way through your neck to avoid doing any damage, and slow hurts.
It's now time for me to go back and get the bar changed to a shorter one. My nape has healed perfectly, with not a single issue. I love catching it in the mirror, in pictures, and seeing the look on peoples' faces when they notice it. It's still not very common, at least here, and that's part of why I like it so much. But it's also because I went through with it, I didn't chicken out, and I got something that I love.
Of course, now I have the itch for more surface piercings, and I keep finding ones that I want to get. They're like potato chips: you can't get just one...