From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Subject: Belly-Sleeping, Peroxide-Using Nipple-Healing was A Healing Nipple
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 19:47:37 GMT

In article <C02HFs.AwG@umassd.edu> acsrdl@UMASSD.EDU writes:
>I've got a question to just sort of throw out: I got my left nipple pirced
>this summer (August 8th) and although it seems to have healed just fine the
>ring keeps on getting stuck.  A couple of times, I tore the new membrane
>inside the pierce: when I turned the ring a thin white "skin" came sliding
>out along with the metal, and then it was back to sleeping on my side etc.
>for a couple of days....  I've been leaving it strictly alone and greasing
>it with neosporin after showers, but I'm wondering how long this phase of
>things will last.

With constant neosporin?  Maybe a long time.  Three months after
perforation, I pronounced my tits healed, and have only had transient
discomforts when I've added too much ring too fast, or too many rings
and they pinch.  But I broke most of the conventional-wisdom "rules"
in care, and slept on my stomach from night one. (I was pierced at a
summer gathering, and the tent was on a lumpy-enough site that the
only way I COULD fall asleep was with my tits in the titpit I'd
sculpted in the middle of the first night/early first morning.  (When
I got back home, I approximated this comfort by putting a three-inch
thick pillow under each shoulder, and one under my forehead.  But I
have big tits and sleep without thrashing too much.  Once the nips are
down in contact with the too-small teeshirt I wore to keep the bedding
and the rings from interacting, it's comfortable to sleep on a new
pierce.))

But after a week or so of taking care of 'em, I came up with a bactine
and peroxide regimen that worked gangbusters on MY tits.

Yes, peroxide.  I'm pretty sure that a drop or two of peroxide on
either hole of the pierce, left to meditate about itself for a minute
before I even THOUGHT about moving the ring, and rinsed away before I
DID move the rings was one of the big reasons I did not EVER see these
"skin tubes".  I'm told the reason not to use peroxide is to keep it
from disrupting the forming skin, and it's true that religious
peroxide use on a picky-place is the best way to get a mark to keloid
short of severe trauma, BUT it seems/seemed to me that ripping the
whole healing surface out even ONCE was likely to be even more
tiresome.  (Worse even than having the cat get his dewclaw hooked in
my half-healed ring.... I did what I had to -- fell on him, pinning
him to the bed so he couldn't wiggle and was grateful for each breath,
and worked a hand in, untangled us.  Cried.)

So I'd dip a Q-tip in peroxide, touch it to each side of the pierce,
and light a cigarette.  By the time I'd finished the chapter and
flushed the throne, the crusties, which were minimal after the first
week, would be soft, and I could dip each nip in a shotglass of warm
water to remove the peroxide and wet the ring, then wet the end of
another Q-tip with bactine and use that to scrub around the holes, and
to clean the ring.  Rotating a bactine-wet ring into a tender pierce
is one of those Very Good Things to Do.  (Using an analgesic cleaner
makes care self-reinforcing.  I need all the help I can get.  Worked
for me.)

>Do piercings usually do this?  Should I be moving the ring around more?  Is
>it too soon to hope for things to be "normal" and all healed?  I'd appreciate
>any info or horror stories you-all could give me.  Thanks!

Mine didn't.  Not while it's crusty, which my tits were not by four
months post-pierce.  It wasn't too soon to hope, but could take a
couplefew weeks from where you are now.  Try the peroxide and bactine
regimen for a few days and see how your tits like it.

And if Kit'n Hook getting one of his cute little paws caught in a ring
isn't horrorshow enough, I was once driving to a friend's piercing
with my three rings linked by a cord (tit, queen kristina, tit).  A
cat ran across the road.  I hit the brakes HARD.

My chest hit the shoulderbelt HARD.  My tits, unhindered by the belt,
proceeded in Newtonian majesty, upon their original trajectory.  Until
they reached the end of the cord, that is.... when they abruptly
ceased moving forward relative to my body, nips first.  By the time
the car stopped I was crying....

I missed the cat, who glared at me from the roadside.  I returned the
favor.

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
STella%thelema.uucp@dec.com	Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian!