Holes. Dug by little moles.

[venta]

Am I normal? Question n in an entire lifetime's series...

Every so often I hear people say things like "yes, I used to wear a nose ring, but I haven't put the ring in for two years, so the hole has begun to close up".

Now I - being very staid and boring - have no bits of me pierced beyond the conventional one-hole-in-each-ear-lobe. They were done in about 1994.

I'm fairly poor about remembering to switch earrings, so usually I have a pair of sleepers which just stay in except on very rare occasions. About once a year I lose one earring, and have to scrabble around to find replacements. At present, I have lost all but one of my silver sleepers, and was wearing some little black smiley faces. Mid-January, I lost one of them, too, and for a couple of weeks wore no earrings at all.

By the time I foraged around and found some new ones, the holes in my ears had begun to close over and putting in earrings was quite painful. For a week or so, the holes were sore and a bit icky, and eventually got the hang of things again and went back to being what you might expect for a piercing that has been there for getting on for twenty years.

So... what I want to know is: how long is it customary to be able to leave a piercing for without it beginning to close up? I've always inferred it to be quite a long time, but personal experience contradicts that.

Does it vary depending on the body part? And why, when the edges of the hole are presumably completely healed, does it decide to start growing back over anyway?

Comments

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

It's very, very dependent the part of the body. Ear lobes are one of the slowest to close up.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wow. If ear lobes are slow, then I'd better not have other bits of me pierced - they might close up in the time it takes to switch rings :)

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

... which is one of the reasons i haven't bothered to get any other bits of myself pierced except for ear-lobes :) i'm just totally unenthused. although if i really really wanted some other bit of me pierced, i'd probably take the risk if i was going to be in not-South-America for the first few weeks.

apparently saline-solution (applied for 10 mins with a tissue) is the done thing if piercings start getting a bit crunchy. i swore by betatine for years but it seems that's more of a 2nd-last resort before involving medical people stat.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Aye. There's a reason why one of my friends no longer has most of her assorted "below-the-neck" piercings - they had to come out for an operation, she was too woozy to put them back in before leaving the hospital, and by the time she was feeling up to it, the holes had closed up ...

[lnr]

You can get plastic sleeper rings and bars for that sort of thing.

Though when I had an operation 18 months ago I couldn't find mine, and just left mine out until I left the hospital that evening, which turned out to be fine.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Aye. I don't think she had any plastic ones ready at the point. Maybe she's related to Wolverine in some way. It was more an example of how different locations (and people) can heal at different rates.