The first time I had my ears pierced, it was with a gun. Like so many others, my ears didn't like this at all. They promptly swelled to larger than the piercing studs could accomodate. Despite this, I kept the earrings in for a few months before giving up on them.
At A Glance Author Najalaise Contact [email protected] IAM Najalaise When Two years ago The next time was a year or two later. Opting this time for a needle, I travelled with my father and stepmother a little over a hundred miles, to the nearest town with tattoo parlors. The first shop we visited had done the tattooed wedding bands for my dad and stepmom, which they were quite happy with. We had called ahead, and made an appointment. However, when we arrived, the piercer was involved in a heated argument with his girlfriend. After waiting for thirty minutes, I decided it was time to find a different piercer. This didn't take long, and the piercer at the next shop was both friendly and able to pierce my ears right away.
She neglected, however, to tell me anything about the captive bead rings she'd inserted. When I wanted to change my earrings, I found that they wouldn't budge. I tried pulling on them with no luck, and spent quite some time turning the balls to see if they'd unscrew. I opened the tool chest, and tried both conventional pliers and needlenose, then wire cutters. Eventually I gave up, and decided to just stop by the shop when I was next in that town.
Before that happened, however, I began experiencing a long list of odd symptoms. I was often dizzy, I fainted now and then, I temporarily lost all vision but peripheral, and I had numbness in one arm and the side of my face. Fearing stroke, brain tumors, or other such maladies, I was scheduled for first a CT scan and then, when that found nothing, an MRI. (Or maybe it did find something- my younger sister said when she saw it that it looked rather like an angry clown.)
Arriving at the hospital, I met Tom, the first of the MRI technicians. (The second, who comes into the story later, was also named Tom.) He explained the procedure to me, then asked me to remove any jewelry I might be wearing. Laughing sheepishly, I explained that I had thus far failed to ascertain how to remove the earrings, and was out of ideas.
Well, the earrings needed to come off for the MRI to work. We began to roam the hospital, looking for a tool that could take off the captive bead rings.
Our first stop was a supply room. Nothing there, however, looked to be of any use. After a short while spent rummaging through, we moved on, grilling people passing in the halls for ideas as we went.
Next, we visited the emergency room. The doctor present had a small circular saw used to remove rings from fingers. Because it was made to cut flat bands, my cbrs had no trouble at all weaseling out from under the saw. I still have a small scar on the back edge of one lobe, because I waited patiently for a minute or two before mentioning that my ear was being cut.
Giving that up as ineffective and dangerous, we moved on, pausing at a bathroom for me to clean up my ear. It continued bleeding, so Tom took up following close behind me and dabbing anxiously at my ear with a paper towel. Blood made him nervous, he said. I teased him about his choice of workplace, but he seemed to have no rejoinder.
Finally, we found a friend of Tom's, a surgery aid of some sort. He had the most enormous pair of wire cutters I have ever seen, before or since. They were fully two feet long. After advising me to hold still, he carefully clipped away the earrings.
Perhaps an hour after the adventure had begun, we returned to the MRI unit, where the second Tom was waiting. He claimed to have begun to suspect me of being fictional- after all, I have an implausible last name. The MRI was performed without further incident. In case you're wondering, there was no evidence of a tumor, and I hadn't had a stroke. I was later diagnosed with Really Strange Migraines.
Many hospitals still don't know how certain types of jewelry work. Had my experience been an emergency, we would not have had the luxury of taking an hour to find a way to remove my earrings. If you have piercings, and particularly if you live in a rural area, I encourage you to visit your local hospitals, show them your piercings, and ask how they'd go about removing the jewelry if the need was present. (Note: if it's a genital piercing you have, you may wish to wait until you're shown to a private exam room before displaying it.) If you have the funds, make the hospital a gift of a cbr remover. Their knowledge of body piercings will make things safer not just for you, but for anyone in your region with a piercing.