In 2001 I went with a friend to have my left nipple pierced. About a year later I had surgery to remove infected tissue in order to stop the chronic mastitis that was brought on by my piercing. Yes, I am a piercing horror story.
While it’s true that the decision to get the piercing was a bit impulsive, pushed along by my alternative lifestyle, I didn’t just jump in without any thought. Many of my friends at the time had at least one piercing. They ranged from nipple, to tongue, to eyebrow, to lip, to labia. So I had quite a bit of empirical evidence that most piercings heal just fine.
My friend and I wanted to share an experience. We carefully planned out our little adventure. The piercing parlor we choose was well known and when we walked in it was plain and sterile, much like a doctors office. A separate set of hermetically sealed equipment was used as we each got a nipple pierced.
During the weeks after we talked about the tedium of following the explicit instructions given to us to help our piercings heal. As time went by, her piercing healed just fine. Mine, on the other hand, did not. The infection in my nipple started out at the piercing site and eventually turned into an inflammation that made half my breast swell painfully.
The moment I had a horror story to tell a handful of people came out of the woodwork to commiserate with their own stories of piercing complication. Immediately I noticed a trend in the stories; preexisting health conditions or metal allergies. So, if I was to go off anecdotal evidence, it seems like most piercing heal find but there are special exceptions to that rule.
If you were to look at our little adventure as an experiment, the deviation from the norm was my boob. No big surprise there, I’m used to my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome making me a special case. While I was aware that I’m predisposed to infection, I mistakenly thought the fact I have pierced ears and multiple tattoos – none of which ever became infected – meant a nipple piercing would be just fine.
But a tattoo is more like a scrapped knee. A nipple piercing is a deep wound. And the circulatory properties of an ear lobe and a breast are very different. Although, even if I had thought of these things before hand, there aren’t statistics on how piercings heal for chronically ill patients so it wasn’t like I had any hard evidence to tell me I was at extra risk.
In the general population infections from piercing are relatively rare. In an English study of piercing, infections happen approximately 10% of the time and hospitalization happen about 0.9% of the time. I, of course, fell into the very small 0.9% that required hospitalization.
Yes, like everything else in life, there’s some risk associated with body piercing. And being informed before you make a big decision is a good thing. I made the best choice I could with the information I had at the time. But, even after my negative experience, the only people I’d really advise to think twice about getting a piercing are those predisposed to infection or those with a metal allergy.
My nipple piercing experience is unsettling anecdotal evidence that could be used to confirm a bias. In the wrong hands it could be used as a cautionary tale of someone partaking in a taboo and then suffering the consequences. But context is everything. In reality, I’m the exception not the rule.
I never got to have the fun part of my nipple being pierced. It went straight from ouch to infection. But I’m taking from this a life lesson, not a regret. I certainly don’t regret deciding to do something relatively impulsive with a good friend so we could have a shared experience.
I just wish I wasn’t so darn special, so I could have had a little more fun and a lot less ouch.
Sources:
Body piercing in England: a survey of piercing at sites other than earlobe
I’ll add something to the ‘this is not a typical experience.’ My husband had an ear piercing that never healed. While it never got badly infected it was sore, wept constantly and bled occasionally for months. He used only reputable hypoallergenic studs, they type they use for piercing guns. He took it out to clean it and let it dry one day and within half an hour it was closed over enough that the earring was not going back in. End of piercing, a week later there wasn’t even a mark or scar.
A couple of years later he decided to try again. Perfect piercing, healed within a week with no bleeding, no weeping, and he can take the stud out. We have no idea why the first one didn’t work, but it’s another good example that outliers are just that – exceptions, not the rule.
And of course sorry about your boob, it sounds incredibly painful.
I have a similar anecdotal story that involves a tattoo. My youngest went to get work done on her two small tattoos that are on her hips. A week and a half later she broke out into a rash, a week after that the rash, which were looked like bug bits turned into a couple of big abscesses. She went to the doc who prescribed antibiotics and a return for a follow up two days later. Two days later she was i the hospital, facing surgery for what turned up to be a lovely case of MRSA. Six weeks later, and a total of six rounds of antibiotics she is almost completely healed. One of the surgical wounds is almost healed over, the others are now little scars.
That experiences is having me hesitate getting my first tattoo, (to celebrate my new freedom…long story there) as I don’t want to experience what she did. Yet I know that my daughter’s ordeal is hardly the norm.
Sylvie Galloway –
The things I thought as I read your comment “Was the artist wearing plastic gloves?” and “Did the artist swab the area with an alcohol swipe?” Over at MayoClinic.com they add “Was the disposable equipment sealed?” and “Was the non-disposable equipment sterilized in an autoclave?”
While I could not find specific statistics about the rate of infection with tattoos, Wiki says, “A variety of medical issues, though uncommon, can result from tattooing.” The important part is the “uncommon.” I have four tattoos and my husband has five. And many of my friends have tattoos. Yours daughters story is the first time I’ve heard of someone getting a staph infection from a tattoo. Which is why my first thoughts were about the sterilization procedure of the tattoo artist.
Here’s the wierd news I found, “CDC categorizes tattooists as ‘personal service workers’ along with hairdressers, barbers, manicurists, acupuncturists, and massage therapists. Since the early 1980s, this overall category of workers has received intense scrutiny in ongoing CDC investigations of how the HIV virus that causes AIDS is spread.”
And the CDC is also really on top of the kind of situation your daughter went through, “This report summarizes investigations of six unlinked clusters of skin and soft tissue infections caused by CA-MRSA among 44 recipients of tattoos from 13 unlicensed tattooists in three states (Ohio, Kentucky, and Vermont); use of nonsterile equipment and suboptimal infection-control practices were identified as potential causes of the infections.”
Even with all this information, I’d still say you have to make the right choice for yourself. I don’t regret any of my tattoos and I feel they were worth the (tiny) risk I took. But that’s me, not you.
The answer to proper procedure on Megan’s tattoo work was yes. I asked her if they had followed proper procedure and it was a licensed studio. As far as she knows the studio didn’t cause the infection, and we can only guess as it was shortly after that she became symptomatic. She had had an infection the previous year caused by what we think was a bug bite. It got all red and nasty, was treated with antibiotics then gone. We don’t know if this was a reinfection caused by the normal trauma skin goes through with a tattoo or something else, and likely never will.
As a hairdresser I am particularly careful when it comes to keeping any cross infections occurring. Of course I can’t say the same of some of my clients who have come to the salon sick. I have serviced people with all sorts of health issues from mild to severe including one that I know for sure was HIV positive. ( he actually told me). We are naturally a little paranoid, because all of us have gotten sick from clients bearing the flu, and still needing to get that color touch up for the weekend.
I will be getting a tattoo eventually, and am planning on a hummingbird for the artwork. Where on my body, and who is going to do it will be determined when I gather my bravery and the funds.
Sylvie Galloway -
I apologize if I came off as though I was questing your, or your daughters, carefulness in choosing a tattoo parlor. For me knowing that such a risk is rare and probably unrelated to the procedure used by the tattoo artist is comforting. I was trying to share the information I found and I’m sorry if that came off wrong.
nah. You didn’t come off wrong at all. You asked the same questions that I did when all that stuff started, and I never was completely convinced that the tattoo parlor was the source. it was a coincidence and I can’t rule out the possibility, but, whatever it was, I am happy my daughter is much much better.
I don’t get too paranoid about stuff anyway, especially with anecdotal stuff, but I do know that odd things happen. Cept when it comes to spiders. I am freaky paranoid when it comes to spiders, especially ones where I can count legs while standing 10 feet away.
I’m a Malcolm Gladwell fan, and a piercing fan (ears only, so far), and I treated myself to my first tattoo for my 60th birthday. The tattoo story will wait. I had the experience of having a friend get an infection when i didn’t, and my grandson get an infection when I didn’t. The following story about my grandson and I getting our ears pierced together is that mine healed fine. They were both in the upper cartilage of the left ear, and that’s pretty painful and takes awhile to heal. But he’s into sports, and wears helmets and his was getting infected a lot. My daughter was taking the earring out and putting it back in, and the poor kid was suffering. Finally, even though there was a lot of sentiment involved, they decided to let it heal closed.
My girlfriend and I have birthdays in early Summer. We have celebrated by getting our ears pierced together, and I picked the tattoo parlor. Mine was fine, hers bled and was not easy to deal with for what seemed like a long time. I felt responsible and guilty. She didn’t blame me, but I blamed myself. It was horrible.
My grandson still has earrings in the lobes of each ear — and I have mine in the lobes, the one in the cartilage, but am a sissy about having piercings in my other parts. My anthro instructor from the community college once mentioned that the risk with eyebrow piercing is that there is a little nerve in there that, if it is damaged, can make half your face collapse. I should probably check that out with another source, but it was enough to make me stick with our ears next time I want to get a piercing with my girlfriend who has done this birthday ritual with me ;-)