Re: Fordyce's spots gone on triangular area of upper lip

I've had a different experience with Fordyce spots.

Much of my bottom lip has healed in the past month. About 15% of the bottom lip (the middle, inner part, in a thin strip) still has cheilitis on it, but most of my lip area looks normal now.

The healed parts of my lip have not had more layers grow on and cover them, they've actually had several layers removed from them (the dead skin layers that had built up on them when they were suffering cheilitis have slowly sloughed off), so they are now softer and more pliable, and physically they look a tiny bit less thick. They look the way my lips used to be for the first 41 years of my life.

As the dead and exfoliating skin has come off to reveal healthy skin underneath, my Fordyce spots in my lower lip have become much more visible. You can see them easily from 2 feet away now, especially if my lip is stretched for any reason. They are so big and noticeable that I wish to "pop" them like a pimple, but when they are squeezed, nothing comes out.

On my bottom lip, I probably have 12 Fordyce spots, half on either side of the lip (none in the very middle of my lower lip). I never noticed them until about 5 weeks ago, and I don't know if they were always there during my cheilitis but I just never saw them underneath the built-up dead skin until my lips started to heal and slough off the dead skin, or whether they are only newly developed, in some kind of new stage of a cheilitis "life cycle".

The Fordyce spots on my upper lip are much tinier, like pinpoints, and more numerous (there are probably 60). Their appearance hasn't changed in the last 2 months (which is when I first realized they were there). I know that they weren't there in my life before cheilitis, but I don't know when they developed in the past year that I've had cheilitis, because I hadn't been looking for them until I heard about "Fordyce spots" 2 months ago. My visual attention for the last year has been on my freaking-out lower lip.

The spots on my upper lip I can live with, because they aren't noticeable to anyone else unless I stretch out that lip in an unnatural way.

For the spots on my bottom lip, which are visible to others now, I am wondering if they will gradually decrease in size as my healing progresses -- I have a feeling they will get smaller over time. Even if they stay intact, making it look as if I have visible "whiteheads" in my lip (for important moments, they probably can be covered up by a heavy lipstick, though I haven't tried it), that is still a better outcome than having all that dead built up exfoliating skin making it look like I have some scary communicable disease. Tweet