Be warned: This is a pretty grisly story, and the photos after the jump are not pretty. We’ll let the gentleman pictured above take it away:

“It’s a chilly Saturday morning and snowboarding sounded like precisely what the day needed. Unfortunatly, the closest New Hampshire mountain was a bone chilling -14 degrees with a 30 mph wind chill. But did this stop me? Nahhh. I packed up and a friend and I headed up to good ole NH for some morning/afternoon shredding.

“After approximately five or six hours of being blasted in the face with negative-degree weather, I thought not feeling my ears was a side effect of just being a bit under-dressed for the occasion — no big deal …

“VERY BIG DEAL. Getting home, I noticed my lobes — or whatever skin I had from my 1 1/4″ stretched lobes — was frozen solid. Literally, to the touch, frozen, and to make it better? The bottom skin was black. So I, being the smart person I am, decided to just go sleep and let them defrost. Wrong again. I woke up a few hours later and noticed some bleeding, some liquid discharge, and some ripping. Forcing the plug out was no easy task, by any means; they were basically frozen to my skin. Finally, after getting them both off, I popped a seemingly gross mid-sized bubble of liquidy stuff and the skin just peeled off like a grape … revealing fresh, bare, bleeding skin.

“Noticing a pattern here, I decided to go to the ER and try to get Medicare, because in this situation, of course, I don’t have any insurance. That’d be ridiculous, right? All the nurses were shocked my earlobes were still attached, as if they would’ve just fallen right off my face for some reason. Basically, the worst day ever. I am not allowed to wear any earrings for about three months to see if anything heals itself or if they have to re-construct or just cut the lobe off.

“Don’t go outside and risk life and — literally — limb. Be cautious. That’s my moral for this story.”