Expressing myself through piercings.

The idea of having piercings was inspired by my friend and ex-coworker Patryk and it clicked immediately. As for most people, it started with earlobes, became addicting, and spread everywhere else as a result. The snake bites became a thing because of my friend Asia, and Luka persuaded me to evolve my earlobe piercings into tunnels.

Piecings I maybe want to have eventually:

I'd like to avoid cartilage piercings altogether, the issues with granulation are not really worth it.

1. Taking care of piercings

An isotonic sea water nasal spray is all you need to take care of fresh piercings — it's cheap and available pretty much anywhere. Just don't spray it on your piercings directly, use a cotton swab.

2. Getting rid of granulation tissue

This is not medical advice, just something that worked for me.

Crush an Aspirin tablet into powder and mix it with about 1-2 ml of saline (¼ of a vial). You can keep the resulting paste in a sealed container for later use. Apply the paste on the granulation tissue and keep it for 15 minutes. Do that two times a day for a few days.

3. Stretching

Get a generic stretching kit (also known as a gaugeing kit), nothing fancy, one taper every 2 mm with a couple of extra smaller ones should be fine. Straight tapers work best under 10 mm; for bigger sizes use the spirals. Advance the tapers about 1 cm each time, until it starts hurting a little; if you're feeling pain for more than a minute, you've gone too far. Do this only once or twice each day — give your skin some time to rest and get used to the new gauge, even if it stops hurting. When upgrading to a bigger gauge, use one of the O-rings from the previous one to hold the taper in place, or use a small rubber band. Clean the holes and tapers often, generic soap and water is fine. If the skin becomes really swollen after inserting a taper, you've gone too far and need to size down immediately. In case you need to remove your tapers for some time entirely, don't worry, you didn't lose much progress: it's going to be much easier to get back to your previous size, but remember to do it one step at a time like before.