Week 10: Observation

I'm pretty sure I've used my piercings in my previous blogs, but they are actually pertinent to what I'm studying in my microbiology class. Recently, somebody gave me a tight hug which exerted pressure on my cartilage piercing. About three to four days after that, my piercing has been bothersome.

A couple of things occurred to my ear:

• redness
• warmth
• swelling
• pain
• itching
• bleeding
• discharge of yellow-white pus

After thinking about all of these bothersome things that happened after someone bumped into my piercing, I realized that this all consists of inflammatory responses. Inflammation is a component of the innate immune system which we are all born with. Whenever there is an infection, wound, or cut, inflammation is the body's normal response to killing whatever foreign pathogens came in contact with the location as well as to help repair whatever tissue was lost from the injury.