I may just be freaking out for no reason, but it has been about four years since my last piercing, so I forgot a bit about the healing part. Anyways, I got my forward helix done five days ago, no problem with the piercing other than I bled quite a bit. The piercer told me to not to touch/play with it, and aside from my cousin jabbing it when I showed it to her ("Oh, is that the new one?" *poke*), I have only touched with a cotton swab to clean and accidentally knocked it a couple of times. I've taken care to keep my hair off of it as best possible, not to get clothes stuck on it, and not to sleep on it.
Yesterday evening I noticed that it really hurt to smile, chew, etc. and upon inspection saw that the area around my piercing was quite swollen. I cleaned it with my sea salt solution, popped some ibuprofen, and went to bed. This morning I woke up to a throbbing, angry ear. I managed to use a hand mirror and flashlight to get a look at the back of the piercing and noticed some pus, so I cleaned it off, and almost immediately felt relief. As the day has progressed, however, while the swelling has gone down my ear still hurts quite a bit and I have cleaned out some little droplets of pus a couple more times.
So my questions are, am I just overreacting? Is there anything else I should be doing to help reduce swelling and pain? The swelling has not encompassed the stud (the stud is one that the jewel screws in and out of, or at least that's what the piercer told me), so I don't see a necessity to take it out for that. Should I try to gently squeeze the swollen area to get more pus out, or just let it come out at its own freewill?
Any thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated!