The healing period was so easy! Everything about it, as I said before, was just too good to be true. I had to do sea salt soaks, just as you're typically supposed to do with piercings, and I had to make sure that the area around it was kept clean by gently washing the area with plain dial soap (the soap you're supposed to use for tattoos and piercings). It healed up really quickly. Until I messed it up, of course.
Long story short, I went to a concert (with Bring Me the Horizon, Of Mice & Men, Issues, and Letlive - just in case you were wondering) and while I was really into Issues's set, I was bumped by someone walking by - totally disrupting my headbanging. Needless to say, my right hand flew up and I managed to whack myself right on the piercing, pulling it out. It was so painful and I nearly doubled over in pain. It wouldn't stop hurting because I didn't realize I had pulled it out. I had my friend look at it and she said it looked like something was unscrewed or something. I decided to bite the bullet and just shoved it back in. Problem solved! The pain went away. But in the week following that, it was an infected mess. I had to soak it like crazy and the amount of puss and blood coming out of it was unreal. It went away pretty quickly though, but I still went to get it checked by my piercer to make sure everything was good. She said it was still anchored to my body, just a little raised and irritated. (I didn't tell her about the concert because I didn't want to be lectured, oops).
After that, everything was smooth sailing. It would have off-days, but nothing too out of the normal. If I would sleep on it, it would be a little sore the next day - just like any other piercing. But then, just a couple of weeks ago, I got a puppy. He's so small and cute, and I just can't help but to pick him up every chance I get - he's growing so quickly and my holding window is rapidly closing! While I was holding my puppy, he wiggled around and managed to hit my dermal. I didn't feel it at all, until the next day when it was a mess. All pussing and swollen and raised. I tried soaking it, but it only made it worse! So I decided to stop soaking it and just let my body do its thing. Apparently, whatever thing my body decided to do totally worked. It cleared up in about a week and went back to normal!
But then I got lazy about it again. And my puppy bumped it again. And now it's even more raised and I can feel the anchor of the piercing beneath my skin, meaning that it is most likely not anchored anymore. I read a post about pushing the piercing down and basically starting the entire healing process back over from square one. I tried pushing it down as hard as I could (didn't hurt) but it didn't really work. I put a bandaid over it very tightly in hopes of it staying down, but it didn't really work.
So, that's where I am right now. And basically, I just wanted to share my experience thus far to forewarn anybody thinking about getting a dermal, specifically on your chest. They're so beautiful and painless, but the thing about dermals is that they can never really completely heal. With normal piercings (like an ear lobe, nostril, belly-button, or any typical kind of piercing) they go completely through the skin. There's an entry point and an exit point, leaving a clear passage for the jewelry - a passage that can learn to heal and stay that way. With dermals, there's this funky little thing just resting under your skin.
A dermal has an anchor, or foot, which is this little thing that sits under your skin. The anchor has small holes on it, allowing tissue to grow through the holes to keep the anchor from just floating around. Then there's the post that holds the jewelry. It's just a metal rod that protrudes out from your body and stays there. Hit that rod, and you can rip the tissue that is attached to the anchor, causing it to reject or infect or raise. Because there's constant movement from this foreign thing under your skin, it's hard for it to completely heal. Dermals are prone to randomly flaring up with infection or rejecting for absolutely no reason!
How the Dermal sits in your body:
Image found on Google Images
Small holes in the anchor:
Image found on Google Images
Dermals are so beautiful and so unique and I absolutely love them so much. I love my dermal more than anything. It's my absolute favorite piercing. You just really have to baby them and I wish I would have researched it a bit more before actually committing. I don't know if I would have made a different decision, but I definitely would have had more general knowledge about how to take care of it and how you need to constantly watch it for snags or bumps.
I hope that you guys were able to learn something from this in case you were looking to get a dermal piercing or just interested about them in general. If you have any more questions, leave a comment and I will answer you or make another blog post about anything in particular. Sorry I didn't have more pictures of my dermal! It's really quite gross, you probably don't want to see it regardless.
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