From: rengen@skat.usc.edu (Robert Engen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.bodyart
Subject: Re: Questions about Tongue Pierces
Date: 21 Jan 1993 20:12:16 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: skat.usc.edu
Keywords: tongue

In article <C16o4K.FuA@news.cso.uiuc.edu> merithew@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (robert merithew) writes:
	I have some questions for the folks with tongue piercings.  (I've read
	the faq).
	
	For how long after the pierce was talking painful?  For how long did

I didn't notice any pain at all while talking, but my tongue was a little
sore for a few days.

	you noticably talk funny?  I have to teach for two hours at a time
	this semester and want to know how this would affect it...

well, for a week or two, you might talk with a lisp, but after that, it 
shoudn't be a problem, and really a lisp (it isn't a bad one, or at least
mine wasn't) isn't that much of a problem :-).

	The faq says that one usually downsizes the barbell after the swelling
	goes down.  How long after the initial pierce is this?  

I did mine in about 2 weeks, some people say you should wait till it is 
"completely" healed, but I found the longer bar to be a nucance (I know
it's spelt wrong :-).

        Does one *always* have to downsize?  

no you don't HAVE to do anything :-), but I would reccomend it, becuase as
I said the longer bar, for me at least, wasn't preferable (I can spell that).

	The nearest piercing place is a bit of a
	drive for me - I want to know how much planning I'd have to do.

Well, you would probably want to plan on getting it downsized.
	
	For how long after the pierce was eating spicy foods a problem?  I
	love hot food.

Well, I don't think I ate spicy food for about a week maybe, but then, I
don't recal having any problems.
	
	Now that you've had it for a while, how do you like your tongue
	pierce?  I really enjoy my other pierces so far...

I love my tongue, it is definately my favorite pierce.  It feels great, 
and is lot's of fun to play with.  But some warnings you might want to 
know about;

1) All though very tempting, try not to bite too much on the barbell, I
   did this, and not only did I wear away my teeth considerably, but I
   broke the balls off the end of my barbell about 3 times, before 
   upsizing (from 14 ga. to 12 ga.) which was stronger, and didn't seem
   to break, or bend as easily. (I also bent 2 bars :-)

2) I would reccommend getting at least 12 ga. (from reason 1 :-), I have
   now moved up to 10 ga. and think this is where I'll stay, has a nice
   solid feel, but I think 14 ga. was definately not solid enough.

3) KEEP IT _*VERY*_ CLEAN.  this is not so much for preventing any type
   of infection, although that is reason enough, but also, because the
   barbell, when is gets stuff on it, has a tendancy to start to smell,
   and can easily give you nasty breath.  I now have 2 barbells, and
   every week, I switch them, leaving the unused one soaking in Listerine
   (the cool blue stuff :-).   Anyone else have this problem, because 
   before this, I never had any problem with bad breath (so my SO says),
   and now, I have to be real good about cleaning it, or my breath gets
   rather fowl (so my SO says :-). I guess I'm lucky to have an SO to let
   me know, otherwise I might not know, and would NEVER get another SO :-)


	thanks,
	--
	  Robert Merithew                                 r-merithew@uiuc.edu
	  grad student, Dept. of Physics
	  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

your welcome,
hope this helps,
robert.