posted
When I first got my lip pierced, everyone asked me, "But what if it gets caught on something?" and I laughed and said I wasn't really worried.
Well, last night I was playing with my dog in the yard and he jumped up to give me a kiss and his tooth got caught on my ring and....well, you can imagine. Lots of blood. Big hole.
Now I have 6 stitches in my lip, the inside of which is purple and bruised, the outside of which is swollen to the size of a grape, and I look like I took a pretty bad beating. And it HURTS.
So to anyone who wears any sort of ring: be careful! It can happen and the results are not pleasant. And this incident has inspired to have the rest of my body piercings (and I'm not talking about ears) changed to barbells instead of rings.
I miss my lip ring. Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
My boyfriend took me to the ER, which sucks because I don't have health insurance right now, but I wasn't going to just leave it hanging open like that. It's basically a half-inch rip with a triangular-shaped hole on the inside (the actual hole where the piercing went through didn't tear, just the skin around it.) It did rip through the hole on the outside, though, which is on the skin part of my face, so there's going to be a small part of my upper chin right below my lip that has a scar.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
But it didn't tear through the lip edge line, though, right? That's the hard part to get right in the ER, because it's hard to get the two sides lined up just right. Too much swelling to tell. If the edges aren't lined up and it cuts through the vermillion border, then the scar is much more obvious.
Sounds like you will be fine. The face has such a good blood supply that it heals fast and tends to scar much less -- but a jag in the middle of the lip line still would stand out. [although it could have been worked on separately later, if you wanted]
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
Yeah, it did tear a little bit through the edge of the lip. The doctor did a nice job stitching it, but he did warn me that after the swelling goes down, I may want to consult a plastic surgeon if the scarring is too obvious. I'm not that worried. I don't mind a scar as long as my lip looks normal otherwise.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Ah, then that's good. A small tear is usually no biggie, since the rest of the lip helps keep it lined up nicely. It's when they tear through the whole lip and you have two mismatched flaps that things get quite dicey.
Just curious: is there anything anyone could have said differently that would have caused you to reconsider before this did happen? Or was it something that didn't hit home until you went through it yourself?
I'm asking because personal stories do seem to have more impact, and I'm betting you might get someone to reconsider by telling yours. You write vividly, too.
posted
Well, I wore a horseshoe-shaped ring, not a full circle, and I guess I figured that if anything got caught on it, I'd get a good tug but that it wouldn't actually rip it out. It was just a freak accident that Buddha's tooth did get caught in a way that it could tear the ring out. I've caught on blankets and clothing plenty of times, but the force was never enough to do any damage. I don't think anyone could have said anything that would have changed my mind about getting the piercing. With any kind of piercing, even just a basic ear stud, there's a risk of having it torn out. It's just not a very common thing to happen. Even though it actually happened to me, it's not going to make me take my other piercings out or scare me away from getting pierced in the future. I don't expect that I will be getting another lip ring, though. Not only would the scar tissue make a new piercing difficult and painful, I'm worried about this happening again. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from getting a facial piercing, I just want to provide a caveat for anyone who's considering it. Be careful!
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Many years ago, a co-worker of mine had an earring pulled out of her ear. I'm not sure if it was a hoop or post. Anyway, it ripped her ear to the point where she probably won't ever be able to wear a pierced earring in that ear, and she was talking about having plastic surgery.
GROSS PART OVER
So, it's not just the "unusual" piercings that can cause problems, regular pierced ears are at risk, too. I still had my girls' ears pierced when they were babies.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Personal story about a bad piercing experience. Possible Squickiness...
I had to wait until I was 14 before I could get my ears pierced, but when I had it done the gal at Claire's put infant studs in my ears with really short posts. The next morning when I was pulling on my shirt the ball part of the stud went INSIDE of my ear.
The story doesn't end there. I pulled out both of the studs after just a day, but my mom was hopeful that we could still make it work, even though my right ear had a big bloody hole in it. She got some thin gold wire hoops and put them in, thinking that the wound would just heal and everything would be okay.
What ended up happening, as far as I can tell, is that the hoops made a hole that was a semicircle instead of a strait line that would come from a stud. After a few months we tried putting in normal studs and they wouldn't go in.
Story still not over yet.
I still wore the hoops, though by now the openings had kinda gotten wonky and they tended to not stay closed (they were a kind of slip-inside-itself closure, if that makes any sense). Anyway we went to the lake one weekend and when I was pulling myself back into the boat from tubing the right earring (the one that had wounded in the first place) got stuck in my life jacket and tore. I felt it pulling on my ear and went the entire way back to shore with my head cocked to the side and not moving. I refused to leave the boat until my mom came and extracted the earrings.
After that incident, I just said screw it and let the holes grow in. After almost a year I gave it another try, this time by my hairdresser at the barber shop I go to. It worked out much better, but I'm not that into wearing earrings anymore and my holes have almost closed a couple of times.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I witnessed a piercing snag once. The lot of us were goofing off on a playset since the group as a whole had gone out at 1 in the morning to light up in a city park.
I saw it real good because we were under bright lights. It was still possible for my virgin eyes to get squicked out by blood at the time, so when the girl's lip ring got caught on some sort of playset piece and she jumped down to the ground, well .. I think I screamed before she did.
I was useless, of course. There I was, big manly man standing there all shocked out of his mind and a pipsqueak girl named Jordan has to calm her down and apply pressure to the wound.
quote:Originally posted by Avadaru: With any kind of piercing, even just a basic ear stud, there's a risk of having it torn out. It's just not a very common thing to happen. Even though it actually happened to me, it's not going to make me take my other piercings out or scare me away from getting pierced in the future.
Why did you decide to switch the rest of your piercings from rings to barbells, then? *interested
Is it that even though you see the risk to be low, it is still higher with the rings, and that's worth the trade-off to you?
---
Edited to add: Or, say, a more viceral reaction, where you might think the difference in risk isn't that much at all, but you just don't like the look of the rings any more because they remind you of this incident? Or that maybe people will be less likely to hassle you about it, regardless of any difference in risk (or lack thereof) that you perceive?
By the way, I'm merely curious -- no need to answer if you get tired of being asked questions. I just am not a member of the pierced culture*, and I find the decisions and reasons fascinating. My mother would not let me get my ears pierced, and so I never really considered it for myself.
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Ah, okay. I better put a warning on it before quidscribis sees it.
Too late. Thanks for the thought, though. I do find it somewhat entertaining that my name is attached to it. I guess I really am that bad.
Why, oh why, oh why, in the universe do I read these threads? I'm a sympathetic pain magnet or something, I think. Ack!
Sorry for your pain, Avadaru. I won't be opening this thread again - it's too... *insert vomity smiley here* ...for me. I wish you a very very speedy recovery.
ETA: Not your fault, CT. I saw the first post, read a few lines, skipped the rest when it reached my pain threshold, tried skimming, then skipping some other posts in between, got to yours, skimmed again, only not fast enough and not skipping enough words... My curiosity got the better of me. Dang cat!
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by sarcasticmuppet: I had to wait until I was 14 before I could get my ears pierced, but when I had it done the gal at Claire's put infant studs in my ears with really short posts. The next morning when I was pulling on my shirt the ball part of the stud went INSIDE of my ear.
My friends who have lots of piercings always tell me how much they hate Claire's, or anywhere that pierces ears with a piercing gun (often operated by a relatively untrained employee).
MORE GROSS STUFF
Professional piercers use a hollow needle (so I'm told), which actually cores out a small piece of flesh, leaving a nice, open hole for the piercing to go through. Piercing guns just smash their way through, leaving all the dead skin crushed up in the hole, so they're more likely to have the kinds of irritations and infections where jewelry gets swallowed up.
DONE GROSS STUFF
Once, I ate a bug. (haha, I wasn't really done!)
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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It isn't just piercings. My grandfather lost his ring finger because he jumped from a hayloft wearing a toy ring from a Cracker Jack box and it snagged.
However, medical technology has come a long way in the 80 years since then, so it's possible that they could have saved that finger today.
But strange things happen nonetheless.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
CT: Barbells are less likely to get snagged on something than a ring, and I am pierced in some *ahem* sensitive areas, and I really really really don't want THOSE piercings getting ripped out. All the piercings I currently wear are rings. After the lip ring incident, I don't want to take any chances I don't have to. It's not a visual aversion to them - if I was able to, I'd get my lip re-pierced in a heartbeat, it's just not an option.
***GROSS-OUT WARNING***
As for how I'm doing today....it hurts a lot, is still very swollen, and there's a lot of pus coming from it, which has me a little bit concerned, like maybe it shouldn't have been stitched up completely. I'm on antibiotics, so hopefully that will clear up the infection. I have also been running a low-grade fever all day (and I just worked an 11-hour shift with no breaks, so you can imagine how much fun that was.)
In response to MightyCow's post, the only kind of piercing that a piercing "gun" is used for is a basic lobe piercing of the ear. Any other kind of piercing is done manually, with a hollow needle, varying in gauge size depending on where you are being pierced. This kind of piercing is usually more painful, since it's obviously a slower puncture than an automatic gun, but much more reliable, because the piercer knows exactly where the needle is going and how the hole is going to turn out.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I believe piercing guns are illegal in Ohio- they're not sterile, wince the inside of the gun can't be cleaned.
***POTENTIAL GROSS-OUT WARNING***
I have my lip pierced on the left side(my left, everyone else's right). When it was pierced, they pierced it with a stud. They sterilized the needle, jewelry, and clamp to hold my lip in an autoclave. They drew a little dot on my lip with a sterile marker(that washed off really easily), disinfected my lip, and pierced from the inside out- the needle went in on the inside. The back of the Labret stud was placed on the end of the needle, so when they pulled the needle out through the front of the lip, the stud back came with it. From there, it was just a matter of screwing in the ball on the end.
Once the piercing healed, I went back, and they changed the piercing to a Captive Ball ring- the ball is held in by the spring force of the metal. It got slightly infected shortly thereafter- a lot of pus was leaking, crusting up the ring. I think it's because the ring moves in the hole, dragging in bacteria and whatnot. That healed relatively quickly, and I kept the ring in. However, it's recently gotten infected again(I got it pierced in early March), and since I will eventually have to take it out to work with National Park Service as a uniformed employee, I'll probably be using my dad's reverse pliers to take it out soon. I really wish I could keep it in a while longer, at least until January when I start sending in applications, but I can't figure out how to keep it from getting infected.
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