Ok so I had my naval pierced about 13 years ago, and took it out after a couple years. It was fully healed when it was removed. If I remember correctly, I had some issues with getting it to heal the first time.
Fast forward, I had a baby a year ago and decided after I got my body back that I wanted jewelry in again. I had the existing hole tapered and they were able to replace jewelry without re piercing it.
This was 2.5 months ago and the damn thing won’t heal. I do the sea salt soaks, and even started using some betadine from work (what we use to scrub into surgery), which seemed to help, but now it’s infected again. No idea why it won’t heal.
I’m going to get some of that Ocean piercing spray stuff, but was wondering if anyone had any ideas or advice?
I’ve seen a lot of infected belly button piercings (maybe eight is my qualifier for “a lot”). At least half were just repierces, and 3/4 were professionally done. Make another fresh hole because repiercing scar tissue is compromising already damaged tissue and basically creating a hotbed for infection.
Are you sure its infected? A lot of people mistake bad healing for infection.. If it’s infected, treat it as such.
tapering an existing piercing can be a risk due to the scar tissue, but in general navel piercings can take up to a year to heal. Sea salt soaks are outdated, and what you use to scrub for surgery is probably WAY too strong.
Sterile saline is what you wanna use, but honestly it gets cleaned well when you shower so unless it’s giving you lots of trouble, a shower normally does the trick.
Make sure your jewelry is of good quality, internally threaded and don’t touch the piercing. Don’t twist it, turn it or move it. The Ocean spray is a waste of money.
Water or sterile saline is fine, unless it’s actually infected, in which case.. Treat as infection. Antibiotics if necessary.
Thanks! Yes it’s good quality jewelry and internally threaded.
And yes, it’s definitely infected. Pocket of pus and everything. It looked like this about a month ago (with pus) which is when I said screw the sea salt soaks since they obviously aren’t helping, and started using diluted betadine. It’s what I use for cat bites and scratches at work.
It was doing great but then I cut back on the frequency of use with the betadine and now I’m back to square one. I bought some saline spray today and used that too.
Currently I’m just treating it like I would any other wound, but I just wasn’t sure if there was a reason it’s not healing, or if this is typical.
In the FWIW dept, it basically took a year for my navel piercing to heal the first time. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to take it out and get it re-pierced a year later. The second time it only took about 3 months to heal, even though it was an “all new” piercing underneath the original. But I didn’t have infections to deal with…
@GrayCatLove 139932 wrote:
I’m not a big “go to the ER because of a little pus” person. As long as you don’t have a fever, it sounds like you know how to treat a wound.
Yeah I don’t go to the ER unless I’m dying lol… I deal with wounds frequently so I’ll just continue to treat treat like any other wound. I’ve been flushing with dilute betadine twice a day since I posted this thread, and it’s already a lot better. Not sure how long I’ll need to keep this up, but I’ll continue it for now.
@Zorba 139935 wrote:
In the FWIW dept, it basically took a year for my navel piercing to heal the first time…
I seem to remember my first piercing taking a long time to heal too. It’s been so long now that I forget exactly, but it was a pain in the ass then too.
Try some warm compresses on it, using camomile tea bags and warm saline solution, put your teabag in the solution to heat it up and place on the piercing, the heat will draw out any pus and the salt will aid healing whilst the camomile soothes, do this everytime you have a flare up, 3 times each day, also take some high strength vitamin C capsules as this will aid healing, even going back through an already open piercing can cause problems, try jewelery made from PTFE or bio plast as this prevents the pus drying and sticking to jewelery which can damage the healing area. Make sure when you shower or bath you get rid of all soap residue as this will act as an irritant and avoid high waist trousers.
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