Why won’t this piercing heal?
Hello! Here is some context:
I originally got my seconds pierced in April 2023 and they seemed to heal perfectly. It wasn’t until December 2024 when I went to the gym a couple times with over-ear headphones. I only used them like twice but in that time both my seconds got incredibly inflamed and developed these red bumps. (I assumed sweat got trapped in the piercing from the headphones) I ended up leaving them alone for the most part. Just used saline solution to keep them clean but I didn’t touch them for around. In that time I got my thirds, flat helix (on the left), and snake bite helix’s (on the right) not sure if these are the right terms.. I’ve gotten every single one of my piercings at Studs and all of them have healed incredibly well. They use a needle and all my piercings have Solid 14k gold top and titanium flat back post. (See example picture). However at the time of the initial “infection” I was wearing these solid gold hoops (pictured below). I had worn these pretty much the entire time I had had the piercing. I only switched back to the studs in December 2025 when I started using Benamethasone Dipropionate on it. At this point I had left it alone for a year and it hadn’t gotten better. It wasn’t red anymore however both had this solid stone like mass next to the hole and it hurt when I touched it. From December 2025 to April 2026 I just used saline solution and the prescribed ointment on it but left it alone. Still nothing has changed and I definitely started to get frustrated. I started to play around with it (I know I know) and try to squeeze out whatever is in there. Some thick white puss would sometimes come out but mostly I would just irritate it, make it bleed, hurt and nothing would get better. Here is where you are probably going to want to smack me on the head but I wanted to try to draw whatever hard mass was in there out with a drawing salve. I used Hyland’s PRID (pictured below) because it’s worked for me before on other parts of my body. I used a q-tip to put a lot of it around my ear and let it sit for 6 hours. When I took it off I kid you not the mass had gone down by 70% on my left ear and 40% on my right ear. My ear was definitely angry with me (it was very red and painful) but I was so happy that something was finally working that I did it again the next day. I had less dramatic results the second go around and my ears were definitely very sore so I decided to stop. This brings us up to now. This is what they look like from the back, the front doesn’t have a bump anymore just the back and it’s irritated and still has a small hard bit next to the hole. I have a very strong desire to take a needle and poke the hard bit to try and open it up so whatever it is can come out but I decided I would consult Reddit first so y’all can tell me how much of an idiot I’ve been about this. Any advice would be amazing and thanks for reading this essay!