the story of T
Aug. 2nd, 2004 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanBoy, I've just been a bundle of joy lately, haven't I?
To make it up to you, here is another story. This one is about my tongue piercing.
My first piercings were pretty standard, first my ears and then my nose. When I got my nose done, I actually had the piercer put two holes in my nose and two in my ear at the same time. She told me it was the most she had ever done at one time before. That night when the endorphins wore off, I passed out at a table. In a club. At a Monster Magnet show.
Anyway.
The first time I had ever even conceived of the possibility of getting your tongue pierced I was talking to somebody who had one, and I kept seeing a flash of silver. I was fascinated. I wanted one. A lot.
So originally I had two holes. I got the first one, and after it healed, got another one slightly in front of it. The healing process for the first peircing was complicated slightly by the fact that I accidentally bit it and tore it slightly, but everything seemed to heal up fine after that. So I went ahead and got the second peircing, and for a long time they both settled in just fine.
Then suddenly I started developing a keloid around the first piercing. A tube of scar tissue started growing up from the top surface of my tongue around the shaft of the barbell. I consulted a piercer who suggested making a compress of aspirin and packing that around the scar tissue. The resulting mud, he told me, would be acidic enough to "burn off" the offending tissue. I tried it, and after repeated applications it seemed to solve the problem. So once again, everything went on as normal
I had two tongue piercings for years.
Years later the keloid started growing back. I tried the same solution - the aspirin paste. I tried tea tree oil. I tried everything. It shrank. It grew back. It shrank. It grew back further. It went on like this for months - and then one morning I awoke to discover that the tube of scar tissue had grown right over the ball and closed up.
Oddly enough, the scar tissue seemed to level out after that. So now I had a piercing that only extended out through the bottom of my tongue. It stayed that way until one days the barbell just fell out of my tongue - it had become unscrewed from the ball.
I now had a ball trapped on the inside of my tongue, and there it stayed for another several years. It didn't seem to be hurting anything and I eventually just kind of forgot about it.
Best I can figure, there must have still been an opening in the underside of my tongue and some bacteria got trapped in there. Because one day, completely out of the blue, I started getting this really strong immune reaction. My tongue swelled up. My neck swelled up. My temperature shot up. What looked like a huge blister formed on the underside of my tongue, right where the old piercing had been.
Of course I hauled my ass to the doctor.
The doctor on call listened to my long tale with a look of utter horror on his face. When I finished he wrote me a script for antibiotics and another one for an appointment with an ears, nose and throat specialist. It would have to be cut out, he told me. He waved me out of his office like he couldn't wait for me to leave.
I got home from the clinic and examined my tongue in the mirror. The blister on the underside was even more enlarged and had turned an ugly yellow colour. My tongue was so swollen it was being squeezed by my remaining barbell. My neck was thicker than my head.
I closed my mouth and immediately felt something warm fill my mouth. Purely by reflex I spit into the sink, and ejected a huge wad of thick yellow pus - along with the "chink" of metal hitting porcelain. My missing ball.
Five minutes later, my tongue was normal size. Fifteen minutes later the swelling in the lymph nodes in my neck were gone. My temperature dropped to normal within seconds.
That was five years ago. I still have one piercing in my tongue. With no trace of the other hole.
I shoulda' taken pictures.
To make it up to you, here is another story. This one is about my tongue piercing.
My first piercings were pretty standard, first my ears and then my nose. When I got my nose done, I actually had the piercer put two holes in my nose and two in my ear at the same time. She told me it was the most she had ever done at one time before. That night when the endorphins wore off, I passed out at a table. In a club. At a Monster Magnet show.
Anyway.
The first time I had ever even conceived of the possibility of getting your tongue pierced I was talking to somebody who had one, and I kept seeing a flash of silver. I was fascinated. I wanted one. A lot.
So originally I had two holes. I got the first one, and after it healed, got another one slightly in front of it. The healing process for the first peircing was complicated slightly by the fact that I accidentally bit it and tore it slightly, but everything seemed to heal up fine after that. So I went ahead and got the second peircing, and for a long time they both settled in just fine.
Then suddenly I started developing a keloid around the first piercing. A tube of scar tissue started growing up from the top surface of my tongue around the shaft of the barbell. I consulted a piercer who suggested making a compress of aspirin and packing that around the scar tissue. The resulting mud, he told me, would be acidic enough to "burn off" the offending tissue. I tried it, and after repeated applications it seemed to solve the problem. So once again, everything went on as normal
I had two tongue piercings for years.
Years later the keloid started growing back. I tried the same solution - the aspirin paste. I tried tea tree oil. I tried everything. It shrank. It grew back. It shrank. It grew back further. It went on like this for months - and then one morning I awoke to discover that the tube of scar tissue had grown right over the ball and closed up.
Oddly enough, the scar tissue seemed to level out after that. So now I had a piercing that only extended out through the bottom of my tongue. It stayed that way until one days the barbell just fell out of my tongue - it had become unscrewed from the ball.
I now had a ball trapped on the inside of my tongue, and there it stayed for another several years. It didn't seem to be hurting anything and I eventually just kind of forgot about it.
Best I can figure, there must have still been an opening in the underside of my tongue and some bacteria got trapped in there. Because one day, completely out of the blue, I started getting this really strong immune reaction. My tongue swelled up. My neck swelled up. My temperature shot up. What looked like a huge blister formed on the underside of my tongue, right where the old piercing had been.
Of course I hauled my ass to the doctor.
The doctor on call listened to my long tale with a look of utter horror on his face. When I finished he wrote me a script for antibiotics and another one for an appointment with an ears, nose and throat specialist. It would have to be cut out, he told me. He waved me out of his office like he couldn't wait for me to leave.
I got home from the clinic and examined my tongue in the mirror. The blister on the underside was even more enlarged and had turned an ugly yellow colour. My tongue was so swollen it was being squeezed by my remaining barbell. My neck was thicker than my head.
I closed my mouth and immediately felt something warm fill my mouth. Purely by reflex I spit into the sink, and ejected a huge wad of thick yellow pus - along with the "chink" of metal hitting porcelain. My missing ball.
Five minutes later, my tongue was normal size. Fifteen minutes later the swelling in the lymph nodes in my neck were gone. My temperature dropped to normal within seconds.
That was five years ago. I still have one piercing in my tongue. With no trace of the other hole.
I shoulda' taken pictures.
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all hail my sister of the pus
Date: 2004-08-03 02:27 am (UTC)