Oh My God

On my 18th birthday my fate was decided, I was going to be a part of the body modification world. I woke up, searched this site with a friend who was buying me a piercing of my choice for my birthday. We spent at least 45 minutes searching the galleries on this site. We were torn between surface piercings or lips piercings. Both of us too afraid of the surface piercing; we decided to put it off until a later date. So off I went to get a vertical labret.

Not more than 3 weeks later I felt guilty for putting off the piercing I had wanted so much, so I withdrew some cash and headed up to Millenium with some friends. Once we were at the studio I spoke with the counterstaff about getting a cleavage piercing done, and my piercer immediately spoke up, stating that a dermal anchor would be better to get placed there. Of course, I had no idea what this was or how it was done, so I began to ask her questions. She explained to me that this piercing was done with a dermal anchor and would be permanent if it healed right, unless I wanted it cut out. I was afraid that a surface bar would reject in the spot, so I was settled on having the dermal anchor. She made sure that I realized the fact that this piercing was pretty much permanent. I filled out the paper work, choose the healing post for the dermal anchor and made my way back to the room. After making sure my ID wasn't fake and entering my information in the database for probably the 5th time, my piercer made her way back to the room and asked if it would be ok if the apprentices and the other piercers could watch as well. She told me that this would be the first client, not co-worker, that she will be doing this procedure on. I agreed as long as my friend could watch as well.

With 8 people packed in the room we began deciding on the placement, we made sure it was centered and went straight down from my vertical labret. It peaks out of the top of my cleavage and we decided on that just in case I decided in the future to add a second one. She sterilized the area after the markings were made, pulled out a 14 gauge tapered hollow needle (I believe, the size is a little hard to remember after so long) straight from the packaging, as well as a dermal anchor. I laid back on the table, and she went over the procedure with me one last time. I took a few deep breaths, started breathing steady and she began. I couldn't see anything, as her hands were in the way, but shortly after she started my friend gasped and screamed "OH MY GOD!" I was slightly concerned, there was a needle puncturing the flesh on my chest and my friend was decently alarmed, I was expecting the worst. The apprentices stared at my chest in awe, which was slightly awkward. It was painful, it hurt just enough to cause an annoyance, but overall it was like being poked in the sternum. She cleaned up the blood, cleaned it again after the blood was wiped off and told me to sit up. I sat up and she fetched me a handheld mirror that I held in front of my chest. The markings were still there on the edge of it, and blood was still seeping out of the edges but I loved it.

After I assured her I loved it, she grabbed the after care brochure for me, starred the things I needed to pay attention to and went over them. (They have a brochure for every type of piercing after care and highlight or star what you need to follow.) She told me to clean it with Satin soap three times daily and that I needed to apply a slight amount of pressure to it, so it settles in the tissue well.

After I slept on the thing I realized that it was going to be a fussy piercing. For the first week, there were small amounts of blood surrounding the piercing; I couldn't seem to sleep on my back for the life of me. Even if I slept on my side, my cleavage basically suffocated it, making it uncomfortable to sleep on my side. It became routine to wake up, brush my teeth, hop in the shower and wet the dried blood before cleaning it gently with the Satin. In fact, I still do it to this day, it has healed nicely but I did have a problem with it when I changed the post to a ball. The ball was too heavy and it stretched out the skin that dermal anchor was under. I had to switch back to a healing post, and re-settle it. I have a little bit of scarring from that, but it is very minimal and almost unnoticeable to the trained eye. Most people don't even notice it at all.