Dry, very tight lips

For the past week I've been having nothing but troubles with my lips. I'm 19 and female, if that matters.
So basically, Tuesday of last week, I noticed my lips were suddenly really dry for some reason, so I put on some Chapstick, which I don't normally use. A little bit later that day, tiny bumps started to form on the sides and middle of my lower lip and on the right side of my upper lip, so I immediately stopped using my chapstick and threw it away just in case.

The next day, everything seemed okay and the bumps kind of just peeled off. The day after that was normal until night time, where my lips started to get agitated again. The next morning I woke up and they were dry, so I spent the whole day using a new stick of Blistex, which worked fine at the time. I went to bed with some Blistex left on my lips as a precaution.

When I woke up the next morning, my lips were in worse shape then before, so I stopped using any sort of lip balms altogether at this point. This is where my lips started to get really, really tight and dry, but they weren't peeling. It was like there was a layer of callus over both my lower and upper lips, it felt so weird.

The next day, still extremely dry and untouched by anything but water and maybe some food, there weren't any peeling sides or anything, but I found I could peel off a thick layer of skin from my lips if I tried. After it was peeled, the fresh skin was STILL tight for some reason, my lips burned quite a bit, and within the day it's back to feeling like there's a layer of plastic over them. It's gone through quite a few times of peeling, burning fresh skin, drying up again, and then the gross tight plastic feeling.

I went to the doctor this morning and was told that my lips are just really dry and she prescribed me moisturizing cream, but it's done nothing other than make it a little bit easier to stretch my lips; they're still really right, still peeling, gross feeling, and when I put the cream on my lips, it basically feels like that layer of plastic that the moisturizer just won't penetrate, even when it's fresh skin.

Can anyone help? I'd really like to get this nipped in the bud before it becomes a "this has been going on for months/years" thing.

Thank you in advance! Tweet