Having lived with my first three microdermals for over a year now gave me some insight into what kind of body modification a microdermal piercing is and what both the up- and downsides of the mod are. As a whole, just like body piercing industry
claims, it’s much easier to live with on daily basis than with regular piercings – microdermals are smaller, so they áffect’ a smaller surface of the body than standard surface piercings, there’s a lower risk of knocking them around and since they become an integral part of you thanks to skin growing in-between the holes in the anchor part, they have a more solid base in your body than a regular fistula created by other forms of body piercings. Of course, there are also downsides – harder to remove, a higher risk of leaving more noticeable scars. My personal downside is also a problem with screwing the tops off to clean both the skin around the anchor and the top of microdermal itself (there’s always some stuff accumulating there – dead skin cells, soap, body lotion, sunscreen, whatever you use in your daily hygiene routine). The
microdermals are usually quite small, so it’s a real feat to handle them, unscrew them only to screw them on a few minutes later, clean them etc. In the long run, however, it all pays off.

The procedure which I underwent on April 21, 2011 was almost as uneventful as it
was the first time around. Since I’d already had three microdermals in my left
wrist and I knew I couldn’t got for symmetrical look with microdermals in my
right wrist (I’m right-handed, so it would be difficult for me to remove the
tops later on to clean them; the right wrist is my watch wrist, too), I decided
to add two new microdermals to my left forearm, somewhere in-between the leaves
of my sleeve design. I made sure to choose the placements wisely as I knew they
had to be easy to access to clean them but also not exposed to daily wear and
tear of knocking them around, rubbing them on various surfaces while writing by
hand or doing anything else.

To create a base for the anchors my piercer used small diameter dermal punches again. They are very sharp and precise and removing a circle of tissue by means of them takes only a few seconds (if the piercer is skilled and experienced, of
course). The hole on the inner side of my forearm bled slightly more than the
one on the outer side of the forearm and it also seemed to hurt a little more
but the pain was far from excruciating!

I’d never had any problems with healing my first microdermals and there weren’t any
problems with healing this time, either. During the first few weeks of their
life, I made sure to clean them with q-tips and warm salty water (I used sea
salt, of course!). All the time I also covered them with band aids to make sure
they wouldn’t catch on anything, get ripped (by a sweater sleeve, for example)
or just get dirty. After the initial healing period (8 weeks or so), I stopped
covering them during the day but kept covering them with band aids during the
night and I’m still doing so – this way they’re secured and I can sleep without
worrying about them!

Over the time I noticed that occasionally one of them flares up and begins to weep some weird fluid; sometimes it’s also slightly swollen. I think it’s caused by a slow but
constant accumulation of dead skin cells and tiny amounts of soap and body
lotion (which I use often and in big quantities – skin moisturizing is good for
tattoos after all!). The problem disappears after some extra cleaning with sea
salt soaks and unscrewing the tops to remove anything that clang to their
underside. Since it’s rather difficult to handle tiny microdermal tops, I’d
recommend using tops with irregular shapes and with slightly bigger diameter as
these are way easier to unscrew and then screw back. It may seem a rather
unimportant detail but it makes a huge difference in a daily life with
microdermals!

I’m still a huge fan of this body modification and I’m definitely satisfied with the way
mine turned out. They were problems-free while healing and they don’t make my
life difficult now when fully healed. Their maintenance can be a little
difficult at times but it’s something that must be done anyway. Clean, healthy
body modifications bring us more joy than dirty, infected ones, so good cleaning
comes with the territory here.

I agree with all these piercers and enthusiasts who say that microdermals are a good
alternative to regular body piercings, especially in trickier placements as my
own experience with them showed me exactly this thing.

Edit: I’m really sorry for the way this post looks but it’s not caused by my negligence; I’m using a netbook now and there are some screen resolution problems related to it. When I want to edit the post  to make it look better, everything looks fine only to appear sloppy afterwards. Here’s to hope my laptop will be fixed soon!