Lend Me Your Ears.
For those who are considering piercing the ear cartilage please, don’t ever use a GUN to pierce! a needle may cost 12 times as much, but trust me it is worth it. there will be people who say that gun piercing is a painless and safe affair, but the gun damages the cartilage, and the truth is a cartilage piercing is 4 times as likely to develop perichondritis when compared to a earlobe piercing. so, if your budget is only a measly $5, stick to the ear lobes!
i learnt that the hard way.
after two weeks my cartilage was still hurting a lot, possibly due to my repeated pressing against the ear to test my pain threshold which severely impeded its healing process. the last straw came on wednesday. the pain suddenly intensified while i was playing pool and i asked yauhong to help me remove the stud in the toilet but it was held so tightly not only yauhong couldn’t do it, my ear seemed to hurt even more and started bleeding lightly (due to mechanical injury).
went to polyclinic the next day and the doctor couldnt remove as well. by that time my ear was, to quote a nurse, “swelling like a cauliflower”.
went to hospital this morning; attempts by three doctors to remove failed, and the last one ended up with me in tears, (boy was that embarrassing!) and more blood. i’m not a crybaby, but really, it was the most painful experience i’ve had in a long time! the “pain” i had when making my tattoo was not even close.
in the end, i had to go to the operating theater and injected with local anaesthetic to numb the pain before it was finally removed successfully. and now my ear looks like this:
before leaving the hospital, i asked the doctor if my hole can be preserved by re inserting the stud back in after a few hours.
i got a earful.
and now i really learnt my lesson lol.
oh, and mambo zouk was fun; i finally met up with overseas ex-classmates like rika, heather and victor, and the weird thing was, just before going in i was telling yauhong and zhiyang how i haven’t seen rika and heather for ages.
