Earstretching.net

As some of you know, I stretched to 0G (my goal size, at least for now) a couple of days ago. Everything was fine for a while, no soreness or anything, and today I decided to put in steel single-flare eyelets in place of the glass colorfronts I'd stretched with. It seemed okay during the day, and right before I was about to go to bed my right lobe got really swollen. My first impulse was to "ice" it with a cold soda can, but I didn't think that it was probably doing more harm than good (the cold made the plug feel even tighter in my ear) so it got a little worse. Finally, I just decided to put my 1G plugs back in.
It's pretty disappointing; I was so excited to be able to wear the wide variety of jewelry I have in 0G. I'd almost rather downsize again to 2G since I had so many pairs of plugs in that size. I'll think about that tomorrow.... but I guess the moral of the story is don't change your plugs the day after stretching, especially if the new ones have sharp edges!

Oh that sucks I really feel for you, it seems you have tried to get to 0 for so long and I was so happy for you!

Thanks! It does suck but I'll live; my ears will be there for the rest of my life so I'm not gonna force them to stay at 0G if they don't want to, haha. I think next time I'll try taping. They seemed ready for the dead-stretch but they must not have been if a simple change of jewelry made my ear swell up like that! It was bizarre; nothing like that has ever happened to me.
It's looking/feeling better today... still a little bigger than normal but if I do another sea salt soak it should help.

Yeah, and you'll end up with beautiful lobes

I wouldn't drop back down to a 2. Just leave your 1gs in for a couple of days and give 0g another shot You've been a lot smarter than the rest of us with stretching, so your ears should be able to stretch better than ours because I'm sure you've got little to no scar tissue.

Thanks for the advice! I'd like to leave a lot of time before I go to 0G again, though, maybe a couple more months. It's still kinda swollen and painful. Bleh... I can't believe this happened after I waited three months between sizes! But this gives me even more reason to believe that no one should ever risk stretching too fast/skipping sizes!

Update: Back to 2G... the swelling started up again so I thought it'd take off more of the pressure. The swelling went down a LOT right after I downsized but is back again, although not quite as bad. I'm fairly confident it's not an infection because I didn't have any open wounds, there's no bright-colored pus, and it's not very red or painful.

Awww that sucks your one of the safest stretchers on here and your ears having problems what is wrong with the world

I know! It's so strange. I feel so unlucky; there are people who can skip five sizes every day and never see the consequences, but I go to an in-between size and stay at it for three months, then this happens! Oh well, that's life.

Are you sure about there being no infection? Would there ever be swelling without infection?

I would do loads of seasalt soaks if i were you (which you probably are already doing )