Piercing Care Crash Course

Okay, I'm not an expert but this is my 5th piercing and "How long does it take to heal?" has always annoyed me. The answer to that question depends on what you want to do and there isn't a simple answer depending on how you nurse your wounds and respect your healing process.

So far as I can tell, there are a few distinct thresholds:

1) THERE WILL BE BLOOD. At this point you best keep up with cleaning almost religiously or you goan get infected. Don't touch it, don't move it, just fucking clean it.

2) SWOLE HOLE. The tissue where the piercing happened is still super swollen from the trauma, but bleeding has mostly stopped. Tons of gross, red crusties still form, and holy fuck if the ring moves you will feel like a knife is cutting through you. Move the ring some after daily cleaning if you can, but don't get crazy.

3) LESION ADHESION. Bleeding has almost completely stopped, but your skin is freaking out trying to figure out where the fuck its little skin cell siblings are and so it tries to get super friendly with the ring cuz its lonely. Avoid touching, moving, or anything but gentle contact between STILL DAILY FUCKING CLEANINGS or the (now *mostly* whitish) crusties will fuck shit up and move you back to step two. After cleanings and de-crustifying, move the piercing back and forth at least a few times; this is the only guaranteed crusty-proof time, so use it wisely.

4) FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY. Crusties are kinda rare and you can play with the ring a little between cleanings, but dude you still have a fucking hole in your body that doesn't belong there. You probably don't need to clean as much now, but if there's pain at any time it's profoundly stupid to ignore unless you got rull good health insurance.

5) YOUR HOLE IS A TEASE. Once you can reliably move your ring and you notice that even if there's a small crusty it doesn't make you want to cry when the ring moves, you're almost there. It'll try to convince you it's completely healed, but remember that even small physical trauma can reopen it somewhat and since you've probably gotten lazy about cleaning it (just a quick rinse during showers, for example) at this point, that's not a good thing.

6) EMO PHASE. Even after the hole itself completely heals, depending on where you were pierced (genitals vs cartilage vs skin, etc) the rest of the tissue may be sensitive for a VERY long time. It may not make you want to cry like the crusties used to, but you might want to avoid rouging it up for as long as a year (or longer). Cleaning at this point should basically be if it looks gross or smells gross, clean it for fuck's sake.

Don't push yourself just because of recovery times you read online: think about what your body is trying to do, what that means for microorganisms' ability to interact with the would, and how your behavior can create potential risk.

Go put some fuckin holes in your body.