Industrial Piercing Bump

So last year, I decided to get more ear piercings. Before that, I only had 2 lower lobe ear piercings in each ear and one industrial piercings on my right ear. I decided to get another industrial on the left ear and a 3rd lower ear piercing for each ear.

The problem that I had this time around were bumps! Granted, I figured that healing would take a lot longer if I decided to get all four piercings at once (industrial = 2, 3rd lower ear lobes = 2), especially having 3 all in one ear BUT this time I had some issues. I got bumps on all four piercings! I knew one for sure was an infection because of how it looked. The other 3 were questionable because they didn't feel or look the same as the one lower ear lobe bump that I can definitely tell it was an infection.

To treat them all, everyday I cleaned it with saline solution, made sure to clean the crusties off after I showered everyday and the one that I could tell was an infection went down in a couple of weeks so that was no biggie.

As for the other 3...well...those took a lot longer. The other lower ear lobe piercing took another month to go away! It didn't look like an obvious infection but had a bump. I was afraid it was a hypertrophic scar or keloid! So thank goodness it went away after awhile.

The industrial was a whole nother monster!! There were 4 total bumps! One on each side of the piercings! The piercing on the top of the ear were smaller than the one on the side though. I've tried sea salt soaks and it didn't seem to do too much. It did feel good and felt like it kind of helped the infection come out when I put a warm wash rag on it soaked with the sea salt solution. I tried to do it as many times as I could in a week, but with work and all, it just didn't happen. PLUS, when I did it, there would be leftover salt residue on my hair! So it would look all white and weird. If I stayed at home, I didn't care about it and you can kind of rinse most of it off but it was still slightly visible...so I prefer not to go outside with it unless I jumped in the shower first.

These bumps on my industrial piercing stayed on for about a year. After half a year, I was contemplating taking them out and wondering whether I should get it looked at. After tons of research, I saw that having them for about 6 months was normal, if you happen to be unlucky enough to get the bumps. So I figured to not stress it, that it should go away soon. The top piercing did pretty well, those went mostly away within the next couple of months or so (they were just small bumps after a couple of months). I was still doing the saline solution method of cleaning. The side piercing was still large and horrible looking! The side that was outside of the lobe was huge! And that one was problematic because I loved to sleep on the left side and it would occasionally bleed after sleeping. After a few months, I couldn't adjust to sleeping on my right side and would try to carefully sleep on my left. Most of the time it would be ok but a few times, I'd wake up to some dried blood on it. Finally, after almost a year, they're all healed. I don't know why this time around, that I had issues with these piercings because all of my other piercings were completely fine and healed with no problems whatsoever.





So the method I used to speed up the healing and finally get rid of the bumps is a surprising one. I will use this method for any of my piercings from now on. Well, when I first get piercings, I will use the saline method and if I get infections, this will be my go-to method.

Healing process method:
Every morning and after I shower in the evening, soak the ends of a cotton swab in saline solution and wipe off crusties. Make sure to get them all and I liked to thoroughly soak the piercing so the solution can go inside of it as well.
For the sea salt method soak, I would use a 1/4 teaspoon to a cup of warm water. The warm water will help draw out the infection where cold won't do anything and hot might mess with your infection more. I would then mix it in a bowl and dip my ear into it for about 5 minutes. After that, I would dip a wash rag into it (if it's still warm, if not, I would make another) and cover my ear with it, almost like wrapping my ear into it. I'd fold the rag so it would cover the front and back of my ear and apply very minimal pressure but enough to know that it's touching. I'd do that until the rag went cold, so about 5-10 minutes.

After it's "healed" but still had infection qualities:
For those bumps, I'm sure it's an infection but didn't look outright to be one. They also did not feel hot to the touch and wasn't oozing or anything, it was all very well contained under the skin and inside the piercing (which is why it probably formed bumps). After a six months, I finally tried to research and try different methods. I tried tea tree oil, this worked well but I didn't see much of a difference. Tried witch hazel and got the same slow result. The method that did work and I'm not too sure why I tried it, was using acne products.
I know, it sounds weird and sounds too extreme for a piercing...but it worked and only took a month for these bumps to go away. I don't know how I got the idea, I didn't read it anywhere but I just had the weird thought and urge to use it one day and I'm so glad I did. When I used it, it didn't burn or anything. I don't know if it's because my body is somewhat used to these products or I'm one tough ass bitch.
The products I used were Neutrogena Rapid Clear Toner (although it was orange..but it was transparent) and Clearasil Ultra Rapid Action Treatment Gel. What I loved about these was that I already had them on hand (I have acne issues because of my messed up hormones, a whole nother story for later) and the treatment gel, I found at Dollar Tree (normally $12 at Walmart)!


These are such lifesavers!! I'm not a professional so if you decide to use these, use these by your own discretion. If they start to hurt or burn, I suggest to not use them. But remember that the toner does contain alcohol in it..so it's likely...but did not burn me. Maybe try an acne product that is not so extreme. These products are extreme because they are supposed to deliver rapid results. Hence, rapid in the names. Also, things will get ugly before they get better. I was at a point where I was tired of the gross looking bump on the outside of my ear, it was huge and starting to look weird. After I used these products, the bump on the inside of my ear on the side lower piercing looked the same before and during treatment, it just shrunk, but the one outside was starting to look gross and bumpy, almost like it turned darker and started getting bumps in it. I'm guessing the infection got really bad in there before I started the treatment. During treatment, the outside bump went down in size but I started scabbing. So...it will look gross because of the scabbing, thank goodness I had hair that covered my ears. It's not your regular scab, but an infected scab, if that made sense. It will get worse before better. Shrunk down but scabbed. So keep that in mind. To be honest, I liked the idea of it opening up and scabbing, this meant that it was easier for the infection to come out. Rather than try to keep slowly coming out of the piercing hole, it meant that it escaped through the skin and scabbed up. Now, I don't know if it scabbed because of this method or because I kept sleeping on it, so also keep that in mind. You may or may not have it open and scab up. I've been through hell with this piercing, had it got hit a couple of times, accidentally had stuff get caught on it, slept on it all weird...it's been through a lot. So it can be likely that it scabbed for a whole nother reason rather than this treatment. I've also never purposefully pulled on the scab or anything.

So what I did for this method was every morning and after a shower in the evening, I would dip the cotton swab in the toner, soak it thoroughly and remove any crusts and puss. After a shower though, I would first use a dry swab to remove the already softened and kind of liquefied crusties and puss. After that, I would use a toner-soaked swab to just get any gunk I didn't get and to apply the toner inside the piercing. Once it was all clean and I kind of soaked the inside of my piercing with the toner, I would apply some acne gel to another cotton swab and apply it to the piercing. I would thoroughly get the whole bump and the hole. I only applied a small dab of gel onto the swab, I didn't rub the gel around the swab tip, I just directly applied the dab to the bump.

Another note is that I only use one swab tip for each bump and multiple swabs for each step! So one whole swab for dry cleaning after showers, where one tip was for the outside of my ear, the other tip was the inside. I know it's the same piercing hole, but one side was worse than the other so I didn't want to spread what was worse on one end to the other that wasn't that bad. Another swab for toner, another swab for the gel. And any additional swabs if you didn't get it thoroughly cleaned with your first swab. I didn't like picking up a whole crusty and trying to keep wiping the piercing with that huge crusty clump on there, so I'd use an additional swab to get the rest of what's left on a side of the piercing. Towards the end of healing, I even had the upper piercing react again and I used another swab for that one. This will result in you using a crap load of swabs a day but to not spread anything, I feel it's worth it. Plus, I bought swabs from Dollar Tree specifically for my piercings. This was to keep my good ones to be used only for ears. (I'm cheap, I like to use expensive stuff for what's intended and cheaper stuff for other purposes). When I had the upper piercing react again, I used a total of 6 swabs every time I cleaned, that's 12 swabs per day (minimum!) and 12 x 7 = 84 swabs a week! But if you go to the dollar store and get 300 swabs for $1, that's only about $2 per month. If I used my more expensive brand of swabs for it, that's around $7 per month. So there's the difference in the long run. Oh! And never double-dipped the swab into the toner, this is to prevent contamination of the toner.

I kept up this method until the bumps were completely down! Once it started scabbing on the outside bump, it did hurt to clean that bump because of the pressure. I tried not to apply too much pressure but still tried to thoroughly clean it. I used a hand mirror to help me see where I was cleaning in conjunction with my bathroom sink mirror. I highly suggest to use a hand mirror to see where you are cleaning! I got the WHOLE bump, which means I wiped the back and underside of the bump and applied the gel on the whole thing, not just what I could see if I were to only use my bathroom sink mirror.

I never took pics of the process, but here's similar pics I found on the web (what the bumps looked like before treatment):

I had additional bumps on the outside of the piercings. The pic only shows two, which are the insides of the ear.


The top bump wasn't that bad, it was the same size as the previous pic's inside bumps. (Thank goodness). BUT I put this picture in here because the bump that she has on the lower piercing on the outside of the ear, was the same size and looks as mines before treatment.

Here are current pics. (You can see how I said the top piercing started reacting a bit again): 

 Before and After I cleaned it. You can see in the top pic, the big outside bump on the lower piercing is completely gone. The top pic also shows that the inside top piercing bump came back a bit. The second pic shows that the top outside piercing bump that also came back a bit and how my lower inside piercing bump isn't so bad now, practically gone. I think the top bumps came back a bit because of when I accidentally hit it, slept on it and forgot to check on it nor cared for it until I saw the bump come back.

Here's the back bump, it's gone but you can see the scar left behind. Hopefully it goes away but it's not that super noticeable: