Sometimes Piercings Just Don't Heal

Every single time we sit down to do a piercing, our goal is for it to heal well. Piercers spend hours and hours agonizing over the perfect placement, the ideal angle, taking classes on how to do better piercings. We are always in forums discussing our technique and researching how to be better. Clients often, do something similar. Following up with their piercer as things heal, being diligent about aftercare and cleaning, perhaps even being in your own forums or online spaces dedicated to piercings. But even with all this work and effort, there is a reality we sadly must face.

Sometimes, our piercings do not heal.

Now, this can happen for a variety of factors. Perhaps the most obvious is something incorrect with the piercing or the aftercare. If the angle or placement is off, that can cause something not to heal. It’s worth noting that even the best piercer in the world will sometimes do a piercing with off-angle and placement- we are only human after all. However, a good piercer will be honest about that and try to correct any mistakes or errors. Aftercare can also play a role. If the client doesn’t clean or care for their piercings, doesn’t downsize it as needed, and doesn’t follow up with a piercer if there are issues, then these things can cause a piercing to fail as well.    These are all common issues. But there are some less common issues that may cause a piercing to fail.

Migration and Rejection

We have a whole blog post about this in-depth here, but migration is the process of a piercing shifting it’s placement in the tissue. Rejection is the end result of a piercing being pushed fully out of the skin. While there is a lot we can do to minimize the risk of migration and rejection through careful placement, proper jewelry, aftercare, and follow-ups, we can never fully remove the risk of this happening. Some piercing placements, like bridges, eyebrows, nipples, and navels, are just more prone to migration and rejection. Sometimes the piercer can do a perfect job, the client can be a perfect client, and the body still pushes the jewelry out. It’s honesty what our bodies are designed to do- remove a foreign object that's trapped in a wound. To our body, this piece of jewelry we love is no different than a splinter- and it wants it gone.

Often when we discuss this, I feel clients all automatically picture the most severe rejection possible. And yes, when that happens, the piercing will need to be removed. But that helix piercing that accidentally got slept on during healing and now has a funky angle and a big bump? That also likely needs to be removed. That nostril piercing that shifted and now just won’t stop getting bumps on it? That also may need to be removed and repierced. Migration can look like a piercing shifting angle or placement over time. Sometimes this occurs through no fault of the piercer or the client; it’s simply how the body responds to being pierced. It is a real risk with piercing.

Migration can also be a slow process. It can happen over the course of many years. Your piercings may feel fine and look fine for a long time, and one morning you notice it seems a little thinner. It’s sitting a little differently. It’s not always a loud and obvious process.

If you suspect migration or rejection, please get back in touch with your piercer so they can help you! We can often catch early signs of migration and rejection, and make the call to remove the jewelry and retire the piercing before there's severe scarring. We can also sometimes get the migration process to stop, and we can live with the piercing settled where it shifted to, as long as it's healthy and stable.

Irritation

We’ve talked at length about irritation bumps on the blog. And often, with proper care, working with a piercer, and troubleshooting, these bumps can heal up and go away on their own. However, sometimes we can’t make it to a piercer. Maybe we got pierced while traveling, and don’t have anyone back home. Perhaps life has gotten so busy that it’s become hard to find the time. Sometimes, we are embarrassed that we have an irritation bump and anxiety makes it hard to reach out. Whatever the case, sometimes we let these things go for longer than we should. The irritation gets worse, and sometimes progresses past the point of something a piercer can easily fix. Sometimes we put in the best effort, working with a piercer, but the irritation has gone beyond what can be managed. This can happen due to getting sick, a severe trauma to the piercing, changes in medication, or moving to a new climate. Whatever the cause, sometimes the only way to solve some irritation is to remove the piercing, let it heal, and then try again. The best way to avoid this is always to reach back out to your piercer at the first sign of irritation or issues, and let us work with you to solve them. The sooner we see what's going on, the better we can help. But even still, sometimes bodies have a hard time with piercings, and sometimes removal is our only option.

Trauma

Piercings are fragile wounds. They are slow-healing and take a long time to be fully healed. During that extended healing, many different things can happen, including a severe trauma. This could be a really bad catch or snag, it could be your little brother hitting you in the ear with a football, it could be tripping and falling, or even a car accident. Whatever the cause, sometimes we experience a severe trauma to our piercings, and this ends up causing enough damage that the piercing needs to be removed. Often, this is accidental because no one wants to injure their piercing that badly. Whatever the cause, if there is a severe enough trauma and the piercing is not able to recover, or it’s been given time and isn’t recovering, sometimes the best call is removal.

Sometimes Our Bodies Just Don’t Heal

Sometimes there’s no distinct cause. The piercing is at a good angle. The jewelry is good. Nothing has migrated or shifted. Sometimes there's barely even irritation. The piercing just isn’t healing. It’s years old, there's still crust and secretions, it’s still sore and tender, and it still flares up from time to time. This, perhaps, is the most frustrating scenario of all. You’ve done everything right, everything you are supposed to, and it’s just still not healing. And if I’m being honest, I don’t always have an answer for people on this one. Sometimes I can theorize about what may have caused it- perhaps a skin condition? An immune disorder? A medical condition or medication that could impact healing? Stress? A simply bad luck placement? But sometimes, there is no answer. There’s no neat explanation like a poor angle or an unlucky snag. Everyone has done everything correctly, and your body simply decided it could not handle the foreign object of jewelry in the channel, and it was unable or unwilling to heal around it.

Whatever the reason, a reality of getting and having piercings is that sometimes they don't heal. And sometimes, we don’t have an explanation for why. This is a risk we take when we choose to be pierced, but that doesn’t make the disappointment of having to remove a piercing any easier. We become attached to our piercings; they are a part of us. We put in effort and time and money to try to care for them, so to have to remove them can be heartbreaking. I encourage you to sit with the emotions that removal might bring up for you, try to honor them, and be kind to yourself. It’s easy to beat ourselves up, say we must have done something wrong or we are just “bad” at having piercings, but that's very rarely the case. Healing a piercing is a complex internal process for our bodies, and sometimes it doesn’t go the way we want. We can respect that our bodies, our piercer, and our best efforts all happened, and honor that it’s still time to let our bodies rest from the strain of trying to heal.

Before making the choice to retire or remove any piercings, please always get in contact with a trusted piercer first so we can see if there's any way we can work with you to save the piercing. Very often, there is. If, for some reason, there isn’t, your piercer can also advise you on how to best care for things once removed.

<3 Lynn