By Sienna from Boston.
Nobody want to hear a sob story!! But I’ll tell you one anyway!! When I was just 15 I was attacked by a man who is now in jail for that crime – it took me a long time to get over it but one of the steps was to try to regain control over my body and thats where my belly piercing came in.
Getting my belly pierced was not always something I admired – in fact I teased others who had them. I never bullied anyone but I couldnt see the point in getting a belly piercing.
After my attack, a counsellor told me that one of the consequences of what happened to me was feeling a lack of self control, and that this was making me frearful – I needed to regain that control and my best friend at the time suggested a belly ring. At first I laughed it off but gradually the idea made sense to me. I mentioned a belly piercing to my counsellor and she said that it was completely up to me and said that it might help.
I done some looking around and found a piercing studio a couple of blocks away from the counsellor’s office here in Boston. The piercing studio was fairly new by the look of it – it was big and open and the piercing lady was quite young – I found out later her name was LOuise. She was really friendly – she explained everything to me in detail and asked told me she would book an appointment for me 3 days later. That gave me time to change my mind if I wanted.
I didnt change my mind and went back the following Friday to get the piercing done. The piercing was fine but what followed wasn’t really great – in the following month I got a terrible infection.
The first mistake I made was to use hydrogen peroxide to clean the piercing (even though Louise told me not to) My friend said she used hydrogen peroxide on her belly piercing and it worked fine for her. A few hours after the piercing I was getting only a tiny bit of discharge but slowly that got worse. By day three there was pus coming out and crusties forming. I totally over reacted and started to clean the piercing too much which made the infection worse again!!
I didnt think to go back to see Louise or a doctor – I thought that taking out the ring would help, but again it only made the piercing infection worse!! I went to a doctor when I got small lumps where the ring was – this apparently was caused by the piercing hole closing up and infected stuff getting trapped inside. Never take out the ring!! See your doctor or the piercer before you do this!!
The doctor gave me some antibiotics to treat the infection and it went away after a few days and the wound healed up with just a tiny scar – its really only barely noticable now. I will get mybelly pierced again!! Now I know how to take care of it properly, it should be a doddle.
Getting my belly pierced and all its problems took my mind off my other troubles, and it made me realise that I need tio take care of myself and listen to people who know what theyre talking about – it definitely helped me on my road to recovery.