Lips Mostly Healed -- Still Battling 'Saliva Pits' and Swelling.

I want to keep this as short and succinct as possible but there's a lot to say so I'll try my best.

Okay so to begin with during winter I had crusting like never before, etc. The usual.I tried to exfoliate it and being as naive as I am, I removed way too many layers and ended up with EC. It's been around 9 months now and I've gone from the rawest of lips, to normal-looking-lips-until-you-put-water-on-them-, to constant peeling, to where I am now. Currently I'm not really peeling, chappedness is now the issue along with waiting for my lips to recover fully from all the damage (regain normal colour and elasticity, etc.) but as for peeling it doesn't happen like before.

Some advice off the top of my head: if you peel until raw and then use a moisturiser like aquaphor you're likely to have layers of skin that are soft from the offset and therefore have a nasty appearance. I'm incredibly impatient in nature so I've never been able to keep a whole layer of skin on for more than a week or two but it's always nice to see after peeling that the next layer is a lot better than the last. I recommend not putting anything on this layer until it hardens a little THEN you blitz it with moisturiser to keep it moist. The best moisturisers for me have been pure cocoa butter (the one I used had petrolatum in it) used alongside aloe vera gel.

I don't want the original post to be too long so I'll provide more advice to anyone with questions, but really I wanted to know if anyone had any advice for me: My biggest issue right now is that saliva is excreted from under the skin of the lips from a little pit that doesn't seem to heal. Probably because when the saliva gets into the skin it turns it white and curls it so I end up peeling it MYSELF because it interferes with my social life. Anyone else had this pit and managed to heal it? I read a post by someone else saying that it was diagnosed as Glandular Cheiitis and that her saliva glands were misplaced so she actually had surgery on them. Since that post she hasn't posted so it may have sorted the problem out for her.

I honestly believe sorting out the saliva would make battling the chappedness until elasticity returns a lot more easier, for now whenever I eat I basically f*** up my progress because the saliva seeps through. It used to be my whole bottom lip and top lip but now its just the edges. I'm also still dealing with the swelling but that's probably exacerbated by my need to remove the saliva-drenched skin. Tweet