Is this infected?
Hi! My piercing is 2 weeks old. Yesterday, I was staying the night at my girlfriend’s house while my house was being inspected by an exterminator to get rid of some summer rodent issues. I was swimming in her pool(which is purified with salt water) and I had dived into the pool with my piercing in and lost it. It was late at night and we could not find it so we took an emergency trip to Walmart (I had to put a earring in my nose in fear it would close up, but maybe that was just my Anxitey speaking and I didn’t truly need it but before it went in I sanitized it with H2Ocean. I bought some studs from Walmart that I believe were stainless steel. They were nose screws and I could not get them in for the life of me and made myself bleed trying to shove it in. The next day, we went to the mall and I bought the titanium clicker ring that I’m currently wearing in this photo and had to clean my piercing with the pierced by Claire’s aftercare solution and a cotton pad from the JCPenneys makeup testing station (it was all I had at the time because inconveniently my girlfriends car was at the shop while we were there and I had ran out of H2Ocean the night before.) it was hurting a bit to the touch all day and my girlfriend noted how it was red. It’s not hot to the touch or swollen anymore but it is leaking very slightly a yellowish liquid almost like pus, but I’m not sure if it’s just a crusty. I’m not sure what downsizing or upsizing means with jewelry and I don’t know what size I was pierced with but the ring I have in my nose right now I believe was an 18g. I adopted the LITHA method a bit before this incident and had taken some advice from someone who had multiple piercings to not even clean it for a few more weeks because I have OCD and was impulsively cleaning it often so the first time I cleaned it was yesterday night when putting in the new jewelry. I really just want to know if it’s infected and I want to avoid taking my jewelry out and letting it close as much as possible. I want to keep my piercing even if it’s infected. Is my piercing infected, and if so, how can I avoid taking it out while still promoting healing.