10A.6 Niebuhr Piercing
Description
This article is from the Piercing FAQ, by Anne Greenblatt with numerous contributions by others.
10A.6 Niebuhr Piercing
by Denise "Ambient" Robinson
Niebuhr... When I saw the first photos of them, I thought, my
goodness, what a STOOPID IDEA. Little did I know I would come to
enjoy it immensely. "Why?" people always ask me... Well, my response
is so that people will make eye-contact with me(having tremendous
ta-tas can be a disadvantage, ya know). My main reason is that its an
originality thang. Noone I've ever seen in person has one, and I
wanted somethang visible to set me apart. Purely poseur.
It definitely receives a high Pain In The Ass rating for many reasons:
the actual piercing, healing, and visibility. The piercing itself can
be rather dangerous considering the location of major nerve trunks and
blood vesseld in the area. Make sure your piercer pinches the area
they're about to pierce before poking you to ensure they're not
hitting any major nerves. If you feel pain any where other than where
the pinch is, ferget it. If you don't have much skin in that
location, you may as well nevermind- if you can't go deep, enough,
it'll reject *fast*.
Apart from the pinch method, thats about the only difference in method
from any other piercing. Clean it, mark it, clamp it, poke it. We
used a 14ga surgical steel barbell between 5/8"-3/4"long (to allow
room for cleaning) with 3/16" balls (to allow me to see around the
thang!). I wouldn't use any larger of a gauge, simply cuz I wouldn't
like the potential visible bulge under the skin.
It shouldn't be a painful piercing. Unfortunately, the piercer to
whom I went ended up taking about 3 seconds to get the needle through,
having not used a cork (supposedly to ensure it being straight), so I
admit that it *did* hurt, but I feel that it *shouldn't* have hurt
that much, done quickly. Oh yeah, for the first 72 hours, I
experienced caked blood on the balls of the jewelry, hence I recommend
holing yerself up for a weekend so's not to freak out your
friends... I've used Bactine (Benzalkonium Chloride) to clean mine
with great results... Twice a day, and any time I get excessively
sweaty or dirty.
Healing a surface piercing seems to be a full-time job for about six
months. Neglecting it for a few days, or playing rough with it seems
to be enough to set it off (but then of course it could be considered
to be a good thang - a nice barometer for your health, so long as you
don't mind pus excreting from between yer eyes). As for the visibility
thang, it can be real frustrating wearing glasses or sunglasses, or
having braids or dreadlocks that catch in the thang. If its not 100%
straight, boy, is it ever obvious. And if it starts to reject, it
ain't a pretty sight. So far I've been lucky, and it seems to be nice
and even and straight. I must say, if this actually stays put, I'll be
incredibly loathe to ever remove it. Its among the few of my
piercings that really feels like it belongs.
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