One of my best friends text me over the August bank holiday weekend, showing me the picture of a piercing she wanted – a cute little heart shaped titanium ring through the daith – the piece of cartilage behind your tragus, in the middle of your ear. I said I’d take her the following weekend and when an adorable ‘cat ear’ shaped white gold ring caught my eye, I was more than sold on getting my daith pierced too!

There have been certain benefits of the daith piercing discussed on the internet. Some people have claimed that getting this piercing has successfully cured their migraines, where modern medicine has failed. I have been recommended acupuncture for my neuralgia in the past, so I can only assume that the daith may be placement of one of the needles during this procedure! I will always keep an open mind about these kind of things, but it’s highly likely that my neuralgia is caused by a blood vessel in my brain being squashed against the trigeminal nerve and I’m not sure pressure on a little piece of cartilage in my ear would change that. I was definitely not expecting a miracle cure from this piercing!

On Sunday morning last week, I met up with two of my closest friends, had a good old ‘spoons breakfast, spent too much money in Primark and headed over to Holier Than Thou in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. I’ve only been inside once with another friend, but I’ve seen so many good reviews about the shop and I can safely confirm that all the 5* reviews on Facebook were completely accurate.

From walking in, to picking the jewellery, to signing the consent (and stressing about my long list of repeat medications I had to write down!) and, finally, being pierced, everyone was absolutely lovely and I couldn’t have imagined a nicer group of people.

The piercing took only a few minutes, from the initial ear clean to the jewellery being put in. I did accidentally swear, when the artist was putting the ring in! There was no ‘pop’, no crunch and no pain I couldn’t handle – a piercing certainly can’t defeat someone living with chronic facial pain, so I’m sure anyone living with migraines would live up to the challenge.

We nipped into a cute little cafe a couple of streets down afterwards and my friend treated me to a hot chocolate. I did bleed quite a bit afterwards – it did pool a little in my ear! So I sat in the cafe with a napkin to my ear! It took a couple of days to be able to clean it properly, as it’s in such a strange little nook that you probably don’t usually pay too much attention to.

In terms of helping my trigeminal neuralgia, it absolutely hasn’t changed anything! I felt a bit of a ‘sore’ sensation in my jaw and temple whilst being pierced and afterwards, but it didn’t trigger an attack of pain. More importantly, it certainly hasn’t cured my neuralgia.

Click here to read what happened next with my trigeminal neuralgia and my daith piercing..

I’m sure I’ll continue to be asked whether I got my piercing to help my ‘headaches’ or whether I’m ‘cured’, but so far, I’m still the same old me with my TN and that’s okay.

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Trigeminal Neuralgia