Nose ring Nonsense
Not exactly surgery, but back in the days before the legendary Kurt Cobain had decided to part company with his brains, a young and very impressionable NotDavidBailey was heavily into what passed for the grunge / greebo scene in our obscure little corner of England.

Hence yours truly walking around at the time in scruffy, baggy combat trousers, chequered shirts worn like cardigans, big army boots - basically I looked a complete prat but that's a different story...

Anyway, one other vital accessory to complete the 'look' was a nose ring and so, having saved up the money and plucked up the courage, off I went to the local tattooists / piercing parlour, clutching the cheap and nasty little silver sleeper that for some reason I wished to have dangling out of one of my nostrils.

Of course, it doesn't work like that though. The tattooist was a professional, and he quite rightly insisted on using a piercing gun and sterile stud. The deed was done, and I was left with a large, hideous, faux-gold stud in my nose and a piece of paper containing several important after care instructions. For example: "Don't take it out for at least two to three weeks" or words to similar effect.

"Sod that!" thought I and upon returning home, immediately removed the gold stud. That hurt quite a bit in itself, but was nothing compared to what I was about to experience next.

Remembering the scene from 'First Blood' where Rambo stitches his own arm back together, I thought it would be wise, like Rambo, to sterilise the bit of metal that I intended to plunge into my damaged flesh by using fire. Cue a cigarette lighter, followed by my screams as the sleeper heated up very quickly and promptly burned the ends of two of my fingers and thumb...

Which, not being ambidextrous, left me with the very tricky job of getting the sleeper through the very tender hole in my nose, which was already showing the very first signs of beginning to scab up and close, with my now very, very sore fingers.

My eyes have never watered so much in my life. It was like taking finely chopped onion and rubbing it into your eyes. There wasn't much blood, but the pain was pretty bad.

Not as bad, however, as the pain from the lovely big abscess which formed a few days later right next to my 'semi-DIY' piercing, forcing me to have the ring removed by a nurse in A+E with the aid of a local anaesthetic, followed by a nice course of antibiotics.

I think the gold stud would probably have looked better than the abscess.
( NotDavidBailey isn't all that sure that he is?, Sun 23 Jan 2011, 11:53, Reply)