About two years ago, I was itching for a new piercing, I have been getting random piercing for about 10 years and I usually take them out, put new ones in, take those out, get new ones... I have been focused on unique ear piercings for a while, mostly because of my job, I can no longer enjoy any facial piercings.
At A Glance Author corporate_slave Contact corporate_slave@bme.anon When Two years ago Artist Ryan Studio Laughing Buddha Location Seattle, WA After scouring BME for some ideas, I had decided that I wanted to get two Vertical Tragus piercings. I had heard really good things about Laughing Buddha, located on Capital Hill in Seattle, so I went there and I encountered Ryan, whom I had previous experience with (he had done my daith piercing in my right ear, when he worked at Slave To The Needle. Anyhow, I explained that I wanted Vertical Tragus in both my ears, he told that this was not possible because the probability of migrating was extremely high and that he had in fact never seen these piercings last for more than a couple of months. He told me that another cool piercing that was almost the same was sideburn surface piercings, so I decided to go this route.
Since I had never seen these piercings before and he had the experience, I trusted that he knew what he was talking about and knew what type of jewerly to use. He pulled a couple of curved barbells out and took me into the room where all the piercings take place. It is actually a pretty comfortable room but I always get pretty quiet right before I get a piercing, I try to get my breathing pattern down, basically I amp myself up so that the pain is limited.
So he performed all the prelimary stuff, measuring, making sure everything was straight, etc... He asked me sit up on the table and he told me to take deep breaths, on the second breath, he did the first side, no problem, no pain, kinda disappointing but oh well. He did the same to the other side and again no pain, I looked in the mirror and wow I just loved them, they were in fact my new favorite piercing. He gave me sea salt and told me to soak them twice a day, every day and told me change by bedsheets twice a week.
Everything was cool... For about three months...
Three months later, they started to hurt, I mean they started to hurt, I could ringing in my ears and they started to ooze puss, BIG TIME. I had follow all instructions to a T, but pretty soon I could see that they started to move, they were migrating. I was trying to save them, they were cute... But god the pain became almost unbearable. A couple of weeks later, I developed two ear infections and the doctor told me it was from the piercings, but I wasn't going to take them out, NO WAY, I had paid $160 for them...
About five months after getting the piercings, I decided that I wanted to get a sternum piercing, I went back to Laughing Buddha and there was another piercer there, Chris X. I had him take a look at my sideburns and he just shook his head and asked me where I got them. I told him that I had gotten them there by Ryan and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. I will save the sternum piercing story for another day...
Anyway, about two weeks later, I was at a bar on Capital Hill and Chris X showed up, we chatted a bit and then he brought up my sideburns, he told me that Ryan had put the wrong jewerly in and that I needed to take them out ASAP. He said that I was headed down a road of very heavy migrating and that as time moved on they would hurt even more.
The next day I paid a visit to Ryan at Laughing Buddha and had him take a look at them. He was so very unhelpful and basically told me to either continue soaking them to try to save them or remove them. I asked him to remove them but he didn't want to do it and sent me on my way. I ended up going home and taking a pair of pilars to the sides of head and pulling them out... That hurt more than anything but I finally got them out. A couple of months later, I tried to get them pierced again at Slave To The Needle and Dave helped me out, he pulled out completly different jewerly so I told him what Ryan originally put in my head. To say the least, he was shocked that Ryan had put the entirely wrong jewerly in and that was the main reason they migrated. Basically, the curved barbell puts an uneven amount of pressure on the piercing causing what I now know as keloids (a build up of puss, that looks almost like a pimple, you can't pop them, you can only remove the jewerly, you are basically out of luck once these kick in). Dave pierced them again with a surface barbell and gave me the same instructions. They too migrated but last for almost a year. I highly recommend to never get these piercings because the skin in that area is far to thin and the movements of your jaw cause them to migrate.