New to the forum...Hello!

Hi friends! I guess I'll start by introducing myself a little bit. I am 24 years old, a female and have had EC for roughly 4 years. (Feels a bit like an AA meeting intro..."Hi, I'm greenbeans and I have EC"...idk) The way mine came about was from over exfoliation. I have pretty bad anxiety/OCD so lip picking became a coping mechanism and eventually a very very very bad habit. They started building up, very thin at first and it quickly snowballed. This occurred for two reasons: 1. I could not stop picking/peeling/biting my lips. Even if my life had depended upon not exfoliating them I wouldn't have been able to stop myself. Reason 2. I have been battling recurring staph infections on my lips for the entirety of the time my lips have been messed up. I have reason to believe that because what's on my face is basically an open wound, it makes a pretty ideal spot for staph to cozy up. And, if anyone knows a thing or two about staph infections, it is that they very rarely only pop up once and go away forever once the infection is cleared. It is very common for staph to be recurrent (which in my case...it is..so yay for me).

Throughout the years, I have been on many creams, ointments, balms, steroids, Antibiotics ect. seen countless doctors and dermatologists who have no idea what EC even is and in general have struggled to get by in life with this problem. It wasn't until this year that I finallllly broke the habit of biting my lips. I was working a lot and my mind wasn't laser focused on my lips 24/7. In February I will have gone an entire year with no biting, picking, peeling of any kind. I have also been using a UV light. I've read sun helps with EC & I knew using a UV light was a successful method for individuals suffering with Psoriasis - my thinking on that being Psoriasis and EC are similar in that there is a significant overgrowth of skin cells, and apparently, according to studies, the UV light can slow the process of the cell regeneration. And slow it did. My lips look vastly different now than they did 10 months ago when I first began all of this. The scabs are thinner, and they are much smaller in size. I still have a long way to go, and it's been a bumpy journey thus far (to say the freakin' least) with staph infection after staph infection and the extreme social anxiety that accompanies this problem. But, I feel like I'm on the mend! I'm glad to have found this forum, it is comforting to know that there is someone out there that understands the plight of living with this condition.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Until next time,

-greenbeans Tweet