For post piercing care.

First, during the first week, hot Sitz baths help with the discomfort.

Make sure that if you are using steel, it is nickle free. Nickle allergy is now the most common cutaneous allergy.

Triple antibiotic ointment helps speed the healing process. Walgreen's has the cheapest generic.

Watch for signs of infection, increasing swelling, redness, and heat. Many infections yield suppuration (pus) but not all. Probably the best thing to do if infection develops is to see your physician (who will almost always recommend removal). After the wound heals (which after removal of the ring proceeds very rapidly - a couple of weeks) you can get the area pierced again.

The healing process after piercing is so much slower than after a puncture. This is because
much more is involved that simple scaring. There has to be an actual ingrowth of skin (epidermis) from the two ends of the tunnel. The rate of progress of this epithelialization is slow (one to two millimeters per week). Then, the epithelium must mature to the point where it will support manipulation. This can take a couple of weeks. The more manipulation prior to complete healing, the longer the healing process. This is why it usually takes a minimum of a month and often several months before the piercing is "mature".

Healing times vary greatly from individual to individual. Some diseases such as vascular insufficiency and diabetes greatly slow down the process. If the tract of the piercing goes through fat, formation of an epithelialized tunnel takes far longer because first a scar (granulation tissue) must form in the fat around the tunnel and only then can the epithelium begin to in grow.

I would be fascinated to know how long it has taken for piercings to completely mature as there is virtually no data out there (piercing studios, to my knowledge do not collect data on time to maturation, at least not that they have published).

Obivously the process of healing is awesome since several million piercings at locations other than the earlobes (which are a special site) go on each year and dead, pierced bodies are not dropping from the trees. I think I saw my first non-earlobe piercing in 1976, it was a set of pierced nipples. We all made a big thing of it. Even the early 80's, pierced nipples and genitals were not common. Now-a-days they are almost as common as extensive tatoos (and have the advantage that they do not cost a fortune to remove).

Good luck and avoid infection.