bleeding piercing

I recently had an exchange of correspondence with a piercer who asked some interesting questions:

I have been piercing for 10 years now in a shop where my husband is the awesome tattoo artist. I just want to be yet another one to thank you for all of your tireless dedication to this industry. I just had a quick question about surface piercings done with polytetrafluoroethylene. At first when these surface piercings became the thing to do around here, I would perform them with the traditional bars for hips, clavicals, Madisons-you name it. I stuck them all with bars. Now this new material seems so much better for healing and does not leave the same scars that the bars do. I just wanted to get your opinion on it. Which is better, the polytetrafluoroethylene or the traditional surface bars?

I received a message from a concerned woman whose VCH piercing was bleeding:

Hi,
I just got a VCH piercing and I know bleeding is normal and so is swelling but this is my vagina and it's kinda scary to pierce it and not really expect it to swell and bleed, when I was told it shouldn't be that bad, that spotting was normal. But I'm not really spotting it's pretty consistant but it's not a lot. I can't really explain it. I've attached some pictures because like I said before it's kinda scary.

Sorry the pictures arent the most attractive. But I don't feel like it looks right and I've been reading your responses, so I sent them. 

I really hope this lady didn't screw up. I'd hate to have to take it out...
Thank you for your time.

Hi there,
It isn't the bleeding that concerns me. This excerpt is from The Piercing Bible:

I got a message from a gentleman with a healed Prince Albert piercing. He was alarmed at seeing some blood after masturbating:

Hello, this is a bit scary. I got a PA a while back. About 5 years back to be exact. All went well, I've since managed to stretch to an 8G. Two days ago, I switched to a captive bead ring. This took a little work, as the bead did not want to pop into the jewelry.

Weird thing is, I um. Well I pleasured myself today, and to my horror was a bunch of blood mixed with semen.

1) It doesn't look swollen, infected, etc
2) There was absolutely no pain before during or after this happened, nor while urinating, rinsing, anything.
3) It sometimes feels a tiny bit sensitive, but nothing I haven't felt before when adjusting to new jewelry.

It definitely freaked me out as the only other time it ever bled was 5 years ago when I first got the piercing.

My reply:

I received this message through the contact page:

I got a VCH piercing 3 days ago by a very well known/good place. I was just wondering, mine is bruised pretty bad and semi swollen and it doesnt really hurt. My biggest concern is that it is bleeding alot. The hole where the jewelry comes out of has this blood looking tissue stuff (skin??) coming out of the hole. My piercing is bleeding alot but this stuff doesnt come off of my skin, its like tissue inside the hole where it is pierced. I have been cleaning it with sea salt solutions. Is this normal? I'm worried.  thank you, K.

Hi K.,

It is hard to evaluate you without seeing you (or at least a photo). Feel free to send a few clear, close-up images to elayneangel @ piercingbible.com and I'll be happy to take a look.

Any piercing can bleed, bruise, and/or swell during the initial phase, though most of the VCH piercings I do don't seem to suffer from that during the aftermath very often.

I received this message today:

Hello Elayne,

I have a question for you concerning my Prince Albert piercing. I've had it for about 2 1/2 months now. I was not sexually active for about a month after getting the piercing, but ever since I've resumed sexual activity the piercing gets sore during intercourse.

Last night, after having sex, I noticed that there was blood in the condom I was wearing. The piercing feels absolutely fine when I'm not having sex, it looks completely healed and I can rotate the CBR without any soreness. However, logic would lead me to believe that it is not completely healed- hence the soreness and bleeding from intercourse.

My question is this: is it normal for a Prince Albert piercing to take this long to heal? And should I refrain from sexual activity completely during the remainder of the healtime? Any and all advice would be gladly appreciated. Thank you. H.

My response:

I received this message via email:

Hi Elayne,
I am having a situation with a piercing I did. Sunday afternoon I did an industrial piercing on a girl named Alex. I'm still an apprentice but this was the 10th industrial piercing I've done and I have never had a problem with any of them up until now.

Alex called me this afternoon, 2 days later, complaining that her piercing is bleeding and she can't get it to stop. It hardly bled when I pierced it, and up until last night when the bleeding started, she said that it was healing just fine. It wasn't sore, red, no signs of infection, and didn't hurt at all. First thing I did was try to figure out how the bleeding started. She said she took 500mg of ibuprofen and the bleeding started shortly after that. I understand that a side effect of ibuprofen is blood thinning but unless she was already bleeding I didn't think the ibuprofen would cause her to start. I just thought it would make it a bit harder to get the bleeding to stop if she did happen to start bleeding. Am I wrong about this?

She also said she thinks she accidentally rolled over onto it in her sleep which would make more sense except that it started bleeding before she went to bed. Is it possible she is just not telling me that she bumped it or something, or is it normal for industrial piercings to randomly start bleeding days later?