My Tongue Piercing Experience so far (one week)

It’s one week ago today that I got my tongue pierced, so I thought I’d just let you know how it’s going so far. Might be useful to those of you who are planning on getting their tongue pierced and maybe those who already have their tongue pierced and want to laugh at me for some reason or another, feel free. All I know is, before I get a new piercing I usually do lots of research on blogs and youtube to read/hear about other people’s experiences. 

So let’s get right into it.

I have to admit that I was a little scared before I got it, which is probably due to the fact that when I was a child I watched a movie (can’t remember the title) in which there was a guy with a pierced tongue who had a permanet speech impediment and up until a few weeks ago I believed that this was something that could happen.  I googled it though and found absolutely nothing about anything like that, so I guess that is highly unlikely to happen. It is, however, why I used to say that I loved tongue piercings but would never get one.
I also remember getting my wisdom teeth taken out being a rather bad experience, not because it hurt but because I couldn’t eat properly and also couldn’t smoke. Those two things combined were stressful for me the say the least. And there are similarities in the healing process, obviously.

So you can imagine I was a little worried before getting pierced. I’d even thought about bringing a friend with me which I haven’t done since my second piercing but in the end I was too impatient to wait until somebody had the time to go with me so I went on my own.

Now let’s get to the pain. The actual piercing itself didn’t hurt too bad, I had to keep a pretty strong mouthwash in my mouth for 30 seconds before it was done and it felt like my mouth was a little bit numb from that. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, I would say the piercing was a 2 or a 3.
It also didn’t swell right away so in the beginning the only thing that was kind of  irritating was the huge bar in my mouth that you get for the first two to three weeks. 

right after getting pierced (excuse my weird facial expression haha)

  However, when I woke up the next day it was swollen quite a bit. My piercer had given me an information sheet that said I shouldn’t be smoking, drinking alcohol and eating spicy or too hot food and dairy products for the first few weeks. On the internet you get various information about all that though, some people say you can do whatever you want right after getting pierced and nothing happens, some say you shouldn’t do any of it for a few hours, days, or weeks.

The dairy free milk substitutes I bought - personally I don't really like the taste of soy milk (0,99€) but it's okay in coffee and stuff like that and much cheaper than the almond drink (2,69€) which, in my opinion, really tastes pretty awesome! 

 Going out with my sister on day 5 after getting pierced - we shared a vegan pizza and I had a soy latte. You see the happy expression on my face, haha. I'm really not that much into soy milk but I think it's cool that many restaurants offer vegan options of food and drinks. The pizza was actually okay but really looks like cheap frozen pizza because of the weird "cheese" on it...

I managed not to smoke for 24 hours and after that tried to keep it at a minimum, I’m starting to fall back into my old patterns though, unfortunately. Trying to cut that back down. I’m also rinsing my mouth every time I smoke, at least with water but most of the time with mouthwash or a sodium chloride solution.
In the beginning I only bought mouthwash but after a few days it actually starts to hurt if you keep it in your mouth for some time (you need to keep it there for at least a minute, so I was told) and it feels like after using it a few times a day for a few days it gets really damaging to the mucosa of the mouth. So I went to the pharmacy and got sodium chloride solution. It’s a little more expensive than the mouthwash (3€ for 10 x 10ml) but it’s much more comfortable to use. I use mouthwash twice a day now and on the other occasions – after eating or smoking – I use the sodium chloride solution. The first few days I also sucked icecubes and camomile icecubes and drank some camomile tea (which I actually really dislike) because it's supposed to have a disinfecting effect as well, I don't really know if that's true but the ice feels pretty good the first few days when your tongue is still swollen. 

 The mouthwash I bought (you see how much of it I had already used after 4 days) and the sodium chloride solution

It still hasn’t healed obviously, the information sheet I got from my piercer says it takes about 6-8 weeks and I need to come back after 2-3 weeks to get the bar changed to a shorter one which I’m really looking forward to!
I didn’t have big trouble talking at any time, you can hear it though if you pay a little attention. Some people say they don’t hear it at all but I do notice that my pronounciation is a little slurred right now. However, this will change when the bar gets changed which is in one or two weeks!

All in all, I’m really happy I got it done, I love the way it looks and the swelling has already gone down to almost nothing. It still hurts a little when I flex my tongue, I can’t really run it over the outside of my teeth yet but then again, it’s only a week ago that it was done.
The first few days I was in a pretty bad mood a lot of the time because I was hungry and craving a cigarette but it was totally worth it and it’s all fine now. I can eat normally again, a little bit slower that usually but that’s fine.

Let’s see how it goes on! 

What about you, do you have a tongue piercing? What’s your expirience, what did you do for after care? And how long did it take to heal?
Or are you planning on getting one? I’d love to hear your opinions!
I hope this was helpful or at least entertaining for some of you, it’s a bit longer than I had planned but I wanted to get all the information in. 

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I hope to hear from you soon! 
xx