I'd say probably about a month ago, Troy took me down to the piercing place where I got my nipples done to finally change out my barbells since it had been six months (which they told me is the normal/typical healing time). I picked out these purple circular barbells from Pennylane (which I always referred to as "hoops" even though they didn't close to a full circle) and I changed them out. My left nipple had always been bothering me ever since I got it pierced; it would always constantly hurt and bleed and would just get infected a lot in general. One of the reasons I got them changed out was because my piercer told me that sometimes changing them out helps with infections, soreness, etc. Granted, it did bleed a little when it got changed out, but literally by the end of the day, it felt great, just like my right one. I didn't have any problems with it, it would be sore occasionally, but not nearly as much as before. Well, probably about four days ago my left piercing was really brought to my attention again, but not by infection or anything like before. I noticed that it seemed a lot looser than I had recalled, like it wasn't as far back into my nipple as I had remembered. When I got them done in January, my piercer told me that he doesn't pierce the actual nipple itself because I guess that would cause a lot of problems and more difficulty healing, so he pierced behind the nipple instead. (Trust me, it still looks fine and it's still, well, a nipple piercing.) Anyway, my left one was definitely at the surface of my nipple, rather than being behind it like I had recalled.

For some reason, I never made it out to my piercing place this week (shame on me, I know) and I began to think that maybe my body was rejecting the piercing. (I had read up on this before I got them done in the first place; trust me, I did my research before I chose to get them done.) And so, after staying home from work today for being sick, I randomly woke up about two hours ago so I could use the bathroom, and just for shits and giggles, I decided to look at my piercing just to see how it was doing. I shit you not, it was literally hanging there by a fucking thread of skin. I didn't want to take any chances and I sure as hell didn't want it to go completely through my nipple and have a fucked up nipple for the rest of my life, so I decided the best thing would be just to take it out and have it close up. I'm not even going to bother getting it re-pierced because it hurt badly enough the first time and I heard that going through scar tissue is even worse... I even changed my right one back to the stainless steel barbell that I had when I first got them pierced. Thus being said, I believe I have found my culprit...

Apparently Pennylane's jewelry is made from really cheap metal, like nickel, and these "cheap" piercings can cause allergic reactions and usually migration and finally rejection. What had happened to me actually wasn't rejection; apparently there is a difference between migration and rejection. Migration is just the movement of the piercing, whether it be painful or otherwise with no actual healing ensued. Rejection is what happens when the body reacts to a foreign object and tries to remove it and typically heals the skin behind it. I'm pretty damn sure if I had waited any longer than my nipple would have split clean in half or some crazy shit like that.

And so, I need to start looking at jewelry made with only surgical stainless steel (like what I changed my right one back to) or either 14k or 18k gold (I don't remember which one at the moment). Apparently silver is really bad and can tarnish the skin, which was news to me.

So, I'm kind of disappointed about this whole situation, but at least my right one is still doing okay. Perhaps I'll invest in another kind of stainless steel barbell or something for it. I actually like the barbells better than the hoops (even though what I had wasn't exactly a hoop, but oh well). Maybe I'll look at the curved ones or something... But anyway, I'm not too happy at the moment and I guess I'll just have to live with one piercing instead of two. I feel kind of naked without my left one, but I'll live. As mentioned, I don't want to bother getting it re-pierced. Perhaps I was destined to just have one, who knows...?