A couple weeks ago, maybe a month now (wow, time really has lost all meaning hasn’t it?), I got my ears pierced. Yes, I know, it is a thing most women have done when they are kids so it is simultaneously weird and strangely interesting to friends that I have done it now. I did get them pierced when I was a kid, I begged and pleaded and harassed my mother until she took me to get them pierced. It was horrible. Everyone said it doesn’t hurt, it did. Not knowing back then getting your ears pierced with a gun is a bad option. The person doing the piercing did not do a good job. The result was blood, pain, the piercings not healing, and lots of scar tissue in my ear lobes.
Why do people do this?
After all that I thought I was someone who couldn’t have pierced ears, since I had such a bad reaction to it. As an adult I googled a couple times to see if there was a way to get them pierced despite the scar tissue in my ear lobes and the results I found said I’d have to have a dermatologist surgically remove the scar tissue, wait for it to heal, then have the dermatologist pierce the ears. All that meant to me was a lot of money to get decorations on my ears, so I again dismissed pierced ears as a thing I couldn’t have.
I started thinking about it during 2020, the pandemic gave me way more thinking time so I looked into it, again. I found a piercer who said they could work around the scar tissue, and that it should be fine. I mean, they said more than that but I highly doubt you want a verbatim recounting of the conversation.
End result, I got them pierced. Experience went really well. It was done properly, with a needle, by a trained professional. Yay, right? Well, yeah, yay, but omg the healing process is a whole thing I was not expecting.
My work peeps said they would take a week to heal, and with all the questions I asked the piercer none of them were “how long is the healing process” so after a week when they weren’t hurting but were uncomfortable I reached out and asked her and she was all “a week? yeah right!” healing time for my ears, as an adult woman, is 4 months. Four months!! That is…commitment.
So there I am, cleaning my piercings three times a day, tending to them as instructed, actively having to ignore all the “advice” friends are giving me because they got their piercings as children and go figure things have changed since then when the cat goes and does something that put me on a whole new path for healing.
I was sleeping on my back, the cat is sleeping all snuggled up next to me, he stretched his front murder mittens out, towards my face, claws slightly extended and while one paw landed on my face the other got my ear and yanked on the piercing. It felt as if one of the claws actually got in the hole. So ya know, woke up to pain, lots of pain. I grabbed the cat’s murder mittens, held them in one hand, while breathing through the pain and telling him what he did is not ok, and do you know what he did? He started purring. Apparently he liked my holding his murder mittens all snugly like that and thought we were cuddling. Yes, this is how I discipline the cat, super effective huh?
That was a Saturday, I remember because I got up, cleaned the now very painful ear, then dealt with the pain all day, grateful I didn’t have to be at work. The next morning when I was cleaning my ears there was blood, the first blood there had been during this whole experience. Me being me I immediately jumped to “I’m gonna lose the piercing” dramatics and started searching things on YouTube and Google to see what to do. FYI, don’t do that, unpleasant things come up.
Since then I have been babying the right ear, trying my best to keep it happy and claw free. It was doing alright when Striker and I were playing and my ear got smashed, again, and when I put my hand to it in reflex I hit the lobe, causing even more pain. Like, wtf, my poor ear!
So here I am, I think a month in to healing, and there is a noticeable difference between my left and right ear. My left ear, which has had no claws, or hands, or anything bashing it, is healing well. The right ear is a constant flux between no pain, to discomfort, to pain. All it takes is a little touch on some days for full on pain, and yet, other days it gets touched and it seems ok, which gets my hopes up that it will eventually heal, and be fine, and I’ll be able to wear something beside these starter hoops that the piercer put in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the hoops, I just am hoping for a day I can change my earrings out, without pain and easily, so what I’m wearing can better reflect my mood, or personality, or whatever. I say this knowing that all my friends with pierced ears tend to wear the same earrings every day, every week, every month, every year, so maybe I’ll end up that way also? Let’s just hope the right ear lobe heals well enough for me to find out!
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 