They DO tell you about “seepage.” Seepage is usually either red (duh) or yellow. They don’t tell you that seepage can seep both inside the nostril, or outside and collect as a little crust surrounding your shining pretty stud… and will seep for at least 2 1/2 weeks… maybe longer… (Check back with me in November.) (Or sometime in 2009.)
They DO tell you to clean it with q-tips and saline. They don’t tell you that you’ll fall in love with the ease of this process, and will begin to use q-tips to clean out both nostrils. (Go ahead. Try it. You know you wanna.)
They DON’T tell you that the hook (see picture now) can rotate OUTWARD, causing a nice shiny silver thing to hang out of your nostril. (No, I’m not taking pictures of my silver booger for your amusement.) (And if we’re ever hanging out and my silver booger is hanging out as well you BETTER tell me. kthx.)
They don’t tell you that cleaning the inside of your nose will be a rather… frustrating process. All the stuff that would normally come out with a simple blowing or wiping you will now find precariously WRAPPED around the aforementioned hook. YES. I said WRAPPED. How many q-tips does it take to unwrap it? You don’t wanna know… Especially if it’s been wrapped there all night and has lost some of its pliability and gotten all sticky. (No, I will not be taking pictures to illustrate this point, either.)
They definitely DON’T tell you that… oh… say… about two weeks after your piercing, long after the tenderness has faded, a different sort of tenderness will develop. One that will make you paranoid that an infection has developed from your negligence in properly cleaning around your nose ring. One that will bring up fears that your body is fast and fiercely rejecting this new foreign object. One that will entice you to peer into the mirror to find a swelling shiny ZIT forming in one of the offended pores.
They absolutely will not tell you that, since the threatening volcano of sebum noted above is nestled so closely to a metal object, the act of inducing an eruption is pretty much impossible. (Your only solution is to look at everyone with your head slightly turned, while praying that the left side of your face won’t explode during casual conversation.)
Enough about me. So, hey. How are you? What’s going on in your life? Any lessons learned?
