Allergy.

Allergy.

Source: myself

Submitter’s Comment: First of all, sorry if my English isn’t good, I’m not a native speaker.

I got my industrial done in October, 2012. I went to a “reputable” piercing studio near my house to get it done. I was told that the barbell was “high quality stainless steel”, the first week was healing normally, like a normal piercing, after the first week it started to get very swollen and itchy, “It may be healing” I thought, but every day my ear became more swollen and the itchiness didn’t let me sleep,  until one morning I woke up and find my ear was like twice the size swollen, and EXTREMELY itchy (like in the photo). 

Until I decided to go to the doctor and find out that the stainless steel barbell I was pierced was what caused the allergy. The doctor prescribed me some antibiotics to avoid infection, some pills to prevent the allergy to spread through my whole ear and a cream, so the itchiness could disappear. Nowadays, I have a nice and healthy ear again, but I still can feel the scars where my industrial used to be.

What’s Awful: I was pierced with a low quality “jewelry” which caused me the allergy.

How it can be fixed: Get pierced with jewelry that the piercing studio knows what material is made of, not materials made of God knows what.

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MODERATOR COMMENT:
1. your english is better than quite a lot of native speakers.

2. Note to all: Stainless Steel is pretty much never “high quality” unless it’s Anatometal or Industrial strength. (Iirc, Neometal and BVLA don’t work with steel at all.) If you’re getting pierced with steel and don’t know if it’s Anatometal or IS, ask for titanium jewelry. I know outside the US Anato and IS are hard to come by in quite a lot of places, so asking for Ti is your next best bet.

-Kat

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I’m gonna add that not all titanium is created equally, it has different grades just like steel… Even “bad” jewelry companies work in titanium. There are also more companies than just Anatometal & Industrial Strength that deal in high-quality steel jewelry. There’s more to jewelry than just the metal, you want something that is made properly with a good surface finish that isn’t covered in tool marks. Your best bet is to just go to a GOOD shop that uses good jewelry, that knows the grade of the metal they’re using. You can always ask them to special-order from a better company or order it yourself from a site like BAF. You can find more information about metal quality and what to ask for on the APP’s website under their minimum standards for jewelry. Basically, for steel you want to hear “F138” and for titanium you want to hear “F136.” Neither metal is just flat-out better than the other, it all depends on the quality of the piece.

- Hayley

11 Notes/ Hide

  1. smashedcupcake said: From the way you type, I would’ve thought English was your diet language. But I hope your ear gets better.
  2. neon-casket said: you write/speak very well!
  3. Rosie. submitted this to awfulmodifications