Jon Kitchen
I’ve been having a problem with my upper lip for a while now. It’s swollen, swollen for no reason, and it looks like I went to get filler injections from some incompetent butcher, not a beautician who runs a salon in the basement of a building.
From my profile, I look like a duck or some silicone beauty from Instagram, but I’m not. I have some kind of health problem, I just don’t know what it is, and many doctors I’ve seen don’t either.
It all started one morning when I looked in the mirror and saw that the right side of my upper lip was slightly swollen. I thought I would probably get herpes during the day because my immunity was weak. I started taking vitamins and putting herpes patches on my lip. Standard procedure when immunity drops.
The size of the lips sometimes varies. Sometimes it is more swollen, and sometimes it is almost normal size.
However, the herpes never came out and I thought that I had gotten ahead of it with a bunch of vitamins. There it was, herpes!
It was not herpes.
However, after a few days, my entire lip was swollen. So much so that it started to crack and a few sores formed. I didn’t feel any pain, except for those few sores on my lips, which are like the ones you get in the winter because you don’t use lip balm.
Okay, that was a wake-up call that something was wrong and that this was definitely not herpes. It could be an allergy or something much worse, judging by the internet search. Please don’t search for your symptoms on the internet.
I went to my GP, whose first question was whether I had fillers. I told him I didn’t, but it took me a few minutes to convince him. The doctor initially thought it was an allergy, but in that case my whole face would be swollen. Besides, he had no more theories or ideas, so he sent me to a dermatologist.
Again, the first question was whether I had fillers. No, my God! The second question was whether I was allergic to anything. No, I know. The doctor looked at my lip and finally gave me something to put on.
I haven’t had fillers.
This cream didn’t help much, so I went to see another dermatologist. Same procedure again. Have you had fillers? BUT PEOPLE, I HAVE NOT! I received some therapy and an opinion that the problem may be in my lymphatic vessels and that they are not working properly, but also a recommendation for another doctor to do a biopsy of my lip to determine how benign my “duck lip” condition is.
While I was on the bus to the doctor who was supposed to do a lip biopsy on me, I realized how good it was that this was happening to me during the coronavirus outbreak, because we all have to wear masks. So I hid my “package” in public, and those who knew me often suggested a solution, jokingly, to really “pump up” my lower lip so that there wouldn’t be such a big difference. Girls these days pay hundreds of euros to have fuller lips, and I got half of them for free!
That’s all well and good, but I still want my normal lips back.
The doctor did a biopsy, made a small incision on the inside of my lip and took a tissue sample. It took a while for the results to come back. My lymph vessels are working normally and I don’t have anything malignant there, and that’s it. The conclusion is that the muscle above my lip is swelling for some reason that the doctors don’t understand.
And that’s it. I don’t have an official diagnosis, other than what I affectionately call a “duck lip.”
