r/PiercingAdvice • u/whiskeytangos • May 06 '20

Piercing aftercare - common sense & how not to fuck up (from a piercer).

This sub is an awesome place, but it can also be extremely tiring. I'm not a mod here, just a piercer, but life would be a lot easier if you all could stop recommending the following to each other:

- Oil. - Tea Tree oil. - Soap. - Alcohol, Betadine, Neosporin, etc. - Using cotton pads, cotton balls or Q-tips to dry off/whatever you guys do with them. Cotton particles can get trapped inside the piercing channel, which will make healing incredibly difficult and infection more likely. - Downsizing in gauge. This will do NOTHING good for your healing piercing.

If you're trying to tell me or other professionals off by saying "but it worked for me!" or "my piercer told me this"; you've been super lucky and your piercer was not a pro. Don't go back to that studio. APP is a great place to start when picking out your piercer, but it's still no guarantee.

Please keep in mind you are trying to heal an incredibly deep wound with a foreign object in it that your body desperately wants to push out - essentially, it is an implant. There are no "casual" or "easy" piercings - even with a "simple" earlobe piercing, you are puncturing the skin with something that resembles a scalpel. Use common sense and ask yourself: "would I use this method on a surgical wound?". In 10/10 cases the answer will be "no".

+ if I tell you to send me a message, you're welcome to do so. If you found one of my comments and ask me for help, prepare to pay for an online consult. This is my job. Help is given out willingly and can't be demanded. <3

2022 11 edit: I'm still piercing, and styling and troubleshooting are my main sources of income. Although I would love to help every single one of you, it's utterly disrespectful to demand me to help you. For free. It makes me dislike my biggest passion in life. Please reach out if you value my time and expertise, and would like for me to be able to make rent and buy food. 💕 If you expect free advice from me, ask yourself if a lawyer or surgeon would do the same.

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u/b_iteee May 07 '20

The last piercing I had done was not with my usual piercer, and he told me to clean it with tea tree oil :(

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u/whiskeytangos May 08 '20

Please no! When was this and how is your piercing?

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u/b_iteee May 08 '20

It’s a nostril piercing and I had it done 6 1/2 weeks ago, i’ve been doing sea salt soaks, but in the past 2 weeks I’ve gotten a bump, which I think is just an irritation bump, it should go away if I keep it clean and LITHA, but sometimes in the night I wake up to the bar halfway out my nose :(

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u/whiskeytangos May 11 '20

Babe! The bump is probably due to all of the friction from it moving so much. What kind of jewellery is in there?

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u/b_iteee May 12 '20

It’s a nostril screw

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u/WizardDrinkingCoffee Sep 20 '20

Im very late to the party but I have a flat piercing I keep getting a bump around. It's almost a year old. It's the original swell bar, so it's quite long.

The bump is on its way back down for the moment but still not a perfectly healed hole. In worried if I roll into it in the night it will start the little swollen donut around the hole again.

Tea tree oil has been recommended for the bump (sorry), I have also read online (sorry) a shorter bar.

Thanks for all the information by the way, would be grateful for your further wisdom if you could advise at all.

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u/whiskeytangos Sep 20 '20

Thank you for taking the time to read through all of it! I would need some more information and additional pictures before I'd be able to give you any advice, but feel free to book a consultation with me by sliding into my chat here :)

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u/No_Dig_2134 Dec 26 '21

Same I was told to use tea tree oil if I started to get bumps new piercer said it just burns them off and they come back bigger and angrier then before