Dermal Implants: What to Do and What to Avoid -- Ninety Third Post

I recently got two dermal implants in my collarbone. The second picture down is what they currently look like. I’m pleased with them, but I’m not exactly boasting about my bruised collarbone with the creepy hole in it just yet. Anyway, I thought I’d make a little list of things to do and things to avoid when getting dermal piercings.

First things first: what the hell is a dermal implant? They go by many names, including dermal anchors, dermal piercings, and microdermal all of the above. They’re closely related to skin divers. Dermal anchors have these little holes in them so that the tissue grows through and holds the implant in place while skin divers are just a little flat disc that sits under your skin. They’re not really related to surface piercings (eyebrow and belly button being the most common ones I can think of) because while both are in the plane of the skin rather than through it like a traditional ear, lip, nose, or tongue piercing, surface piercings still have both an entry and exit wound. Dermals are single-point piercings, so they don’t have an exit wound. This makes them the most likely to reject and fall out.

So here it is.

DO’s and DON’T’s of Dermal Piercings

DO look up lots of pictures of people with dermals where you want a dermal, if you can find them. You probably can. Make sure you really want it; this isn't like a traditional or surface piercing that you can just take out if you don't like it. You have to slice it out of your skin if you want to get rid of it.

DON'T watch YouTube videos of dermal implants unless you handle pain better when you know what's going on. Personally, I can handle pretty much anything as long as I don't see it happening. I’m really only squeamish about my own body, so I had a few freak-outs afterwards about how I paid someone to punch two holes in my chest, but I was fine during the procedure.

DO consider the impact this will have on your lifestyle. If you can't wear loose, comfy bottoms that don't put pressure on your hips, don't pierce your hips until you have a long vacation. If you always sling your purse or messenger bag across your body, make sure the piercings aren't underneath the strap. I switched which shoulder I put my bag on a few months before I got the piercing. If you swim or are pretty much any kind of competitive athlete, you should probably reconsider, at least until the off season. And, just like any other visible piercing, make sure your employer is cool with it BEFORE you pay someone to surgically implant jewelry into your skin.

DON'T pay attention to what other people say about how much it hurt. I thought my nose piercing hurt more than my dermals, and it made me cry while the dermals didn't, but lots of people will tell you it's the worst or the least or whatever. It hurts, and it takes longer than a standard ear or nostril piercing, but I'd say that severe menstrual cramps are worse in the long run. The fact remains that this is an incision, not a simple hole-punching.

DO pay top dollar for this piercing. Getting a dermal implant is technically a surgical procedure; you need a little more training to do it right than you do to pierce earlobes, which, for your information, can be done successfully by a fifteen-year-old in her room with her mom’s sewing needles, an ice cube, hydrogen peroxide, and matches. If you want to keep the damn things under your skin, it’s worth it to find a professional who’s been trained to install dermal anchors.

DON'T be drunk or caffeinated or on any kind of blood thinner. You'll probably bleed some anyway, but you'll definitely bleed all over everything if your blood is being thinned out by anything. And being drunk before a piercing is just a terrible idea anyway, even if your piercer does allow it. A word to the wise: reputable piercers will not pierce you when you're drunk.

DO eat at least half an hour beforehand. You're that much less likely to faint if you've got some food in your system.

DO make sure you like the top. You're stuck with it if it's a skin diver. Most anchors have interchangeable tops, but it’ll be at least two months before you should even think about touching it. And even then, you should probably have a professional piercer change it out for you.

DO remember to breathe while you’re being pierced.

DON'T breathe too hard or you'll increase your blood flow and bleed all over the place.

DON’T panic if it takes longer than you think it should to finish the piercing process. If you’re smart and picked a good tattoo/piercing parlor, your piercer knows what they’re doing. Dermals can be tricky to get in all the way, especially if you have tight skin. My whole procedure, with two anchors, took almost an hour because the second one wouldn’t go in all the way. Now I have a massive bruise around it and a sore pectoral muscle. But hey, it’s in! It’ll be cute in a few days when it stops looking like I’m a zombie.

DON'T take a picture and put it on Facebook while you're still in the parlor. No one wants to see your super badass and/or cute piercings when they still look like you've been mauled by a bear and/or shot. It will look as cool to everyone else as it does to you after it’s healed.

DO expect blood, exotically colored bruises, and some painful accidental contact with your new body mod.

DO understand that people who don’t have or want dermals themselves may be weirded out or grossed out by your fancy new decorations. It’s your body, so I hope that your friends will be supportive and not make you doubt your choice to spend a large amount of money having someone punch holes in your body, but be prepared for negative responses.

Here's few examples of how dermals look to different kinds of people:

How it looks to you (perfect/cool/cute/badass/your adjective of choice):

Stolen from some random place on the first page of a google image search

 

How it actually looks:

That's me, my dermals, and a little bit of my cleavage. Hello, cleavage. Make sure you can see the yellow/green bruise around the white arrow pointing to the text about the meat tenderizer; you may have to tilt your monitor.

How it looks to someone who thinks dermals are gross:

I have no idea what that is actually a picture of and I don’t want to know, although I think it might be someone’s head. I’ve been watching Supernatural (it’s like crack; I hate horror movies and yet here I am, watching a horror movie in TV show format) and I feel like I’ve seen it before in one of the particularly gory episodes.

And you’re welcome. Scouring google images for “infected dermal piercing” images is not a fun experience, let me tell you.

DO wait a week or more for the bleeding and bruising and swelling to taper off. The picture of me up there was taken five days after piercing, and the bruising is just fading to green and yellow from the rather attractive purple it started out as. Healing takes time.

DO remember that you’re trying to convince your body to accept a piece of metal as part of itself. This is true for every piercing, but dermal implants are the best candidates for rejection because they’re single-point, not threaded through the skin like every other piercing. Your body can just shove the foreign object out of itself if it gets infected.

DON'T fucking touch it. This is a direct quote from my piercer. Just don't do it. It hurts and you'll get yourself infected in no time. Once you're healed up, it's probably okay to touch, but don't make a habit out of playing with it.

DO clean your dermal anchor with salt water (about half a teaspoon of non iodized sea salt in a cup of warm water works well), filtered tap water (if it's safe to drink, it's good for cleaning your piercing), or sterile saline solution (like for contacts). If it's on a large flat surface like collarbone or hip (right next to the eye, on very small wrists, or behind the ear might be tricky, but fingers you can just soak in a bowl or something), fill a shot glass with your preferred cleanser and hold it over the piercing. This lets it soak and gently softens any crusty gunk on days when you don’t take a shower.

DON'T use soap on it, at least until it's fully healed. Soap plus open wound with foreign object equals pain and rejection. Clarification: if it gets infected after the initial healing period, feel free to use antibacterial soap around the infected site. It's worked to clear up all my infections and proto-infections (not oozing or hurting, but starting to swell), and it's much faster than waiting for them to heal up on their own.

So, yeah! If you’re thinking about getting a dermal, I would say go for it. The only caveat is that if you think you might have a job someday where cool body mods aren’t allowed, don’t put it in a super visible place (like your face). Removing a dermal anchor safely requires a surgical procedure similar to the one it took to get it in, which is expensive, and will undoubtedly leave a scar. I plan on being a scientist forever, so piercings and tattoos are no big. Even if I end up teaching, I should be fine because it’s easy to cover up the collarbone with a scarf, jacket, or, worst-case scenario, bandaid, and I’m not even sure that colleges in fifteen to twenty years are going to hate on visible body mods.