Aftercare

Piercing

Scarification Aftercare

Days 1-3:

• Wash your new wound twice, daily, with an antibacterial/antimicrobial soap to prevent infection in the exposed areas. Once in the morning and once at night.
  
• For this, a simple Dial, Softsoap, or Lever 2000 should suffice. Since you are actually trying to form extra scar tissue, you don’t need to worry about overly mild soaps, such as with a piercing.
  
• Do NOT scrub across the open skin. This will make for undesired, uneven scarring in the end.
  
• Lather up the soap in clean hands and gently rub it into the cuts. Rinse with fresh water and repeat. Rinse once more and pat dry, gently, with a new, disposable, paper towel.
  
• Following your wash, apply a layer of antibiotic ointment over the entire scar and cover it completely airtight with a cellophane dressing (ie. Saran wrap) and tape.
  

• The ointment under the wrap will help to prevent infection from exposure to the non-sterile, plastic dressing. Do not wrap too tightly, as this may keep your cutting from keloiding upward as well. Leave this dressing on entirely until your next wash.
  
  It is important to keep the area moist by sealing it off from the air.

Days 3-10:

• Wash the newly scarring area twice daily, just as before
  
• Since new tissue fibers should be sealing off the open skin by now, infection may be less of a concern, but twice a day cleaning is still an important step for removing foreign, troublesome bacterium.
  
• In place of the antibiotic ointment, you may decide on applying an irritant to help your body build extra scar tissue. Toasted sesame oil has shown to be a terrific option as the crushed seeds will break up healing tissue and the oil will keep the area from drying out.
  
• An alternative to this is Vaseline, or similar non-antibiotic substitute, mixed with a small amount of sugar, which will provide an effect comparable to the crushed seeds.
  
• Rub your irritant in gently in the direction of the cutting lines, so as not to “blow out” the scar. Back and forth scrubbing with any product could potentially cause undesirable, “blown out” scarring in localized areas. For the most even scar distribution, scrubbing in any fashion during initial healing should be avoided.
  
• Follow the irritant application with your cellophane dressing in the same fashion as mentioned above, being sure to seal the area airtight. Not allowing the area to dry will force your body to heal with new scar tissue, as it is unable to form new, healthy skin cells beneath an absent scab.
  
• Do not wrap too tightly. It is important to leave room for scar tissue to rise.
  
  Continue these steps until day 10 of your healing cycle.

It is very possible you will develop an itching, aggravating heat rash below the cellophane, especially if you don’t remove it to wash twice a day. This is normal and should only be concerned as an irritation. If it bothers you too much you can stop with the cellophane wrapping, but a less desired keloiding may be the result.

Your body will eventually (around 5-6 weeks) generate enough scar tissue to completely cover any open wounds, and at this time you may decide to rub, scratch, smack, itch, etc. the design to build even more scar tissue without risk of blowing out lines, but it is important that if you do this, do it to ALL of it, or you will find yourself having more areas that raise more or less than others.

In the end, the degree of keloiding you experience is dependant upon your genetics. The reality is that some people just scar more than others. As well, a cutting that is placed over many, or any, different moving muscle groups may scar more in certain areas as it is naturally irritated more from everyday action.

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