 My Labret Piercing I just got my piercing done on Saturday, May 1, 1999. I did it pretty much on a whim after thinking about it for a couple of weeks. I'm keeping a journal of what it's like, and will post it all here... This journal is broken down by weeks and days, and will cover at the very least my initial healing process. Hopefully, it might be useful to someone else who decides to get a similar piercing and wants to know what to expect and look for. Otherwise, it's just another of my attempts to bring some meaning into my fairly boring life! Week 1 (May 1-7): Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 7 Week 2 (May 8-14): Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 13 Week 3 (May 15-21): (no entries) Week 4 (May 22-28): Day 28 Week 5 (May 29-June 4):Day 34 | Day 35 (photo!) Week 6 (June 5-11): Day 38 (photo!) Week 7 (June 12-18): Day 46 Week 8 (June 19-25): Day 54 After the 8-week Healing Period...August 2, 1999; August 9, 1999; August 20, 1999; September 24, 1999; October 7, 1999 Week 1 (May 1-7) Day 0 (Friday, Aril 30, 1999): I drop off Anthony at Area 51, and decide to go get pierced. Koi, where I wanted to go, is closed, so I go to Blue Boutique. It is closing in 15 minutes, and I lose my nerve. I try on corsets instead. Day 1 (Saturday, May 1, 1999): "Ok, this is it." After dropping off Anthony at Area 51, I zoom to Blue Boutique (Koi is closed again - don't they realize nighttime is a good time to get pierced???). I ask, "How much?" They reply, "About $50." "Let's do it," I say. I pick out my jewelry (a stainless surgical steel rod about 1.5 inches long, called a fishtail labret - I assume the name comes from the fact that they bend it into a curve, but 'fishhook' would make more sense), fill out the paperwork, and Cory (who looks about 17) takes me back to the piercing room. He makes small talk while he bends the fishtail. He explains that the end will lie next to my gum, and will need to be flipped from side to side periodically. I confess various inanities - that I'm too old (28), that I haven't even given this much thought, that I know it's a purely cosmetic piercing, etc. Cory assures me that he once pierced a 65 year old guy. After everything is disinfected (my mouth, the needle the fishtail, etc.) and he's marked the spot he will pierce, I lie down on the table. Cory sticks some gauze and a bottle cork behind my lip, and gets a good grip on my lip with a pair of tongs or forceps. He makes some joke about pain. "Do not," I lisp through cork, gauze, and forceps, "mention pain." "Ok," Cory says, and his voice gets this almost faraway sound, "how about this: Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth." He repeats it, almost crooning. I close my eyes, and when the needle enters, it feels almost exactly like a phlibotomist's needle when I give blood: coldly intrusive with a sharp bite deep in my jaw, but not exactly painful. "Ok, the needle is in," says Cory. He fiddles some more, and announces that the jewelry is in. I get up, and look in the mirror; it looks weird, red flesh with this metal thing poking out. "You didn't even flinch," grins Cory, while he cleans off the disinfectant from my chin. I wash my hands, rinse some blood from inside my mouth, and leave. By 11 (2 hours later), the piercing tingles and hurts a little for a few seconds every few minutes. At 1 am, when I turn the fishtail to the right, it is tender and I bleed a little. I sit in the club bathroom and let the pain subside. The pain is like a clothespin pinching my lower lip - dull, throbbing, with a sharp core somewhere remote and distant from my chin - almost out of reach, like I am feeling it in my brain (which I am, technically). Very odd and alien. I realize that the fishtail needs to be adjusted - it's bent at more than a 45 degree angle, so it appears to poke off to the right or left, depending on which side I have it turned. At home, I cleanse and disinfected it with Peroxyl and then Listerine (cut 50% with water), then I go to bed. Day 2 (Sunday, May 2, 1999): In the shower, I rotate and wash the piercing with soap, then listerine. No blood! It is still achey, and although I can't see much swelling, less of the rod is showing, so it must be swollen. Brushing my teeth feels funny - the movements make the bar rotate on its own, which gives my whole lower lip a peculiar, disjointed feeling, as if I have some kind of steel scaffolding in my mouth. It feels a little like having animated dental tools in my mouth. It is odd, but oddly good, too. Spitting is difficult, as is rubbing my lips together when I try to even out my lipstick. The only real pain is down under my jaw. Chewing some tough bread at lunchtimes causes some discomfort until I remove the crust, but once my meal of eggs and well-cooked veggies come, I'm fine. Day 3 (Monday, May 3, 1999): The piercing is still a little red, and it was swollen in the morning, but when I turned it at noon, it oozed a tiny amount of blood and didn't hurt at all. The pain that I do feel appears occasionally, and is deep in the lower jaw area, nowhere near the piercing itself. I've gotten to really like the feeling of the fishtail inside my mouth, and I keep clinking it against my bottom teeth. The most annoying part is that I have to cleanse my mouth after any food or drink except water. I'm responding by not eating much - maybe I'll lose weight! Another interesting thing is the way the rod moves around when I chew. It doesn't hurt, but I can feel this alien thing flipping around inside - and outside! - my mouth. Soup is definitely the way to go for a few days. Day 4 (Tuesday, May 4, 1999): Still slightly red, but the hole is clearly healing pretty well. I have to clean off dried white blood cells a couple of times a day. When I turn it, there's no blood at all. It's a little bit itchy, but not so much that it even distracts me. The pain in the jaw area has completely subsided. I've noticed that when the rod is on the left, it hurts a little more, but it stays put. When it's on the right, it doesn't hurt at all, but it wiggles up quite a bit. I can't figure out why. My co-workers are all very amused by this thing in my face. Most of them have never seen a facial piercing up close, and they're very curious. "Did it hurt?" they ask a lot, along with, "Does it hurt now?", "What's it look like inside?", "Why did you do it?", "Does it get in the way when you chew?", and "Are you going to get fired?" Day 5 (Wednesday, May 5, 1999): Nothing really new -- the flesh around the piercing is pink, and I clean off a lot of white blood cells every few hours. The inside seems fine, and there's a little itching around the hole on the outside, but it looks really good - no infection that I can see. There's no pain or discomfort, and I didn't have any problems eating last night, although I'm still avoiding tough, chewy foods like bagels. Day 7 (Friday, May 7, 1999): Ow! I think I've gotten an infection. The piercing seems to be producing a lot of white blood cells, and it hurts a lot. My whole chin hurts. When I get home, I'm going to follow the special aftercare instructions for treating an infection - wash the piercing very well with Castile soap (available at Wild Oats, but don't look at ShopKo, WalMart, or Smiths - the pharmacists there have never heard of Castile soap and the teenagers who answer the phone aren't even sure how to spell "soap"...), then apply tea tree oil (3-5 drops mixed in with .5 ounces of neutral oil - tea tree oil is really strong), then apply a lot of saline solution. Week 2 (May 8-14) Day 9 (Sunday, May 9, 1999): Well, the infection cleared up fine - I was amazed at how much less pain I had by Saturday! I guess I'd gotten used to it hurting, but by Saturday afternoon it was back to normal, not painful at all. I don't know how I got an infection, but I have renewed faith in the aftercare sheet which says not to use hydrogen peroxide and regular or antibacterial soap - I was using both since I couldn't find the Castile soap. Day 10 (Monday, May 10, 1999): Went back to Blue Boutique to get the labret bent correctly now that the swelling is down. When the piercer took it out, he had to put a needle in the hole to hold it open. He says it looks fine and that the infection seems to have cleared up. He also suggested I use Vitamin E oil to get rid of the redness. Day 13 (Thursday, May 13, 1999): I'm afraid I'm getting a keloid - a raised scar around the hole. The various bar experts all grab my chin, squint at it critically, say, "Hmmmm," twist my head into better light, shake their heads and say, "Looks like a keloid." Everyone I know seems slightly fascinated with my chin, despite the fact that it's not all that unusual a piercing. I think it's because I'm not really the type to get pierced and most people are still quite surprised. Anyway, back to the scar -- all the "experts" keep explaining that I'll be scarred for life and that I should have gone to [insert piercing establishment] instead. I refuse to believe it's a scar, since I barely produce scar tissue no matter what. Week 3 (May 15-21) Woops, no entries. Nothing changed much. Week 4 (May 22-28) Day 28 (Friday, May 28, 1999): Well, the redness has gone away, and the "keloid" is mysteriously missing so I think I was right - it was just irritation. I probably should have gone back to Blue Boutique to have a piercer look at it, but I figured if it WAS scar tissue, there was nothing I could do about it anyway. The hole is completely smooth, and the healing seems to be complete, although I still have a month to go, actually. The only time it hurts is if I bump it into something (which happens more often than you'd think - you become acutely aware of how often you flop your hands into your face when it HURTS every time you do it). Everyone at work seems to have gotten used to it, too, and I've gotten completely comfortable with having it in my mouth. I still play with it too much, and I am annoyed by the fact that it sort of rubs my gums when I move it from one side to the other - when I first move it over, it's hard to push it down far enough into the space under my gums, but after a while it nestles down and quits bothering me. Week 5 (May 29-June 4) Day 34 (Thursday, June 03, 1999): I ran into one of the Blue Boutique piercers on Sunday, and he said that sometimes scar tissue will just go away like that, so my scarring may or may not have been a keloid. Either way, it's gone now. Last night, I accidentally knocked out my labret (it's a long story), and was pleased to note that I was able to put it right back in with no problem. This is very exciting! I was envisioning having to have an emergency trip back to the piercers to get it reinserted, but it was just fine, without any pain or problems. Day 35 (Friday, June 04, 1999):
Week 6 (June 5-11) Day 38 (Monday, June 07, 1999): Ok, I got the photos to look better. It was a user-error; I'm not used to working with the format they were in. So here is a better photos of my chin, although the labret still just looks like a dot on my chin. The photos were overexposed, so I had to correct them in Photoshop, hence the odd coloring.  Day 46 (Tuesday, June 15, 1999): I discovered that Fred Meyers does in fact carry Castile Soap, in the grocery department with the natural living products. Ask around if you need the stuff - I only found it by accident. There have been absolutely no new developments with my labret. Week 8 (June 19-25) Day 54 (Wednesday, June 23, 1999): About the retainer: I went to Koi, which everyone says is a really great place, and bought a retainer - a small clear plastic push-pin looking item which cost $15! The guy who sold it to me gave really explicit instructions about how to cut it, then he cut it himself - without measuring it against my lip. When I got home, I couldn't get it in at all - it was way too short. I took it back and they gave me a replacement, but I was screwed, because I needed the retainer for an important meeting, and I had to just remove my jewelry and hope that no one noticed, and that the hole wouldn't give me any problems. Luckily, with the jewelry out, you can't see much except a little dark spot on my chin, and I didn't have any problmes taking out the jewelry or getitng it back in. Koi isn't exactly on my A-list now, however - they didn't seem all that professional, based on my limited experience with them. Additional entries Monday, August 2, 1999: Interesting! I had a weird v-shaped piece of flesh that bobbed back and forth when I moved the fishtail from side to side, and it made my retainer almost impossible to put in. I noticed this weekend that the v-shaped flesh is now gone. I don't know where it went, and I'll have to see if the retainer works better now. Monday, August 9, 1999: Argh. On Friday, I went rollerblading for the first time, and I took out the fishtail because I kept having images of falling on my face and knocking all my teeth out. BIG mistake. When I went to put it back in, it was hard to find the inside opening, and I guess I dug around in there a little; it wasn't closed up, however. Later that evening, it started to hurt, and it hurts like hell! Friday, August 20, 1999: Well, I went to Blue Boutique last week and had Dustin look at it. He said it was swollen up, which is why it hurt so bad - the flesh was swollen around the bend in the fishtail, which was pressing the end against my lip. He re-bent it to stick out farther, so the swelling wasn't on the bend, and it immediately hurt a lot less. Since then, though, it's gotten all angry and gross - I seem to be re-healing again. Wednesday, I noticed it's doing the keloid-thing again; hopefully it will go away again. It's producing a lot of the clearish white gunk, and a little blood, but it doesn't hurt. Friday, September 24, 1999: Ok, I have finally gotten sick of this. The swelling went down, and the pain subsided, but I've had keloid tissue for a month now and it's not responding to salt water or tea tree oil, so I'm taking it out. the scarring seems to be pushing the piercing to the left, so it's not really centered anymore. After the scar tissue is gone, maybe I'll get it re-done. October 7, 1999: I miss my labret so much! It was the hardest for the first week, but now I guess I'm okay without it. I have a tiny white scar, but it's not really noticable. I think I'll try a flatback next time - some of my problems may have been related to the constant back and forth of the fishtail, since the hole inside had developed a pronounced ridge on each side. The inside is almost completely smooth now. |
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