PSA: Doctor Google is NOT Your Friend

I woke up on Sunday morning to the ever-so-delightful coppery taste of blood in my mouth, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that there was no blood on my clean pillow sheet (priorities, yo). By the time I made it into my bathroom, I already knew there was swelling in my lower lip. It was the morning that kept on giving, really. Upon inspection, I hypothesized that I had A) bitten my lip in my sleep, or B) my kid had sucker punched me when we were both asleep. In any case, I knew that it was not a cold sore but that I had a wholly unattractive, entirely annoying fat lip.

Oh goodie!

So I iced it. I tried not to touch it. As it got more and more unruly, I decided to cover all bases and popped some Valtrex and slathered Abreva on that bad boy like it was my job. By George, it didn’t work. In fact, it got worse.

And now, four days later, it looks like this:

In a desperate attempt to fix this monstrosity that looks like the lovechild of the grossest teenage pimple and most painful canker sore ever, I made one of the worst decisions I have ever made in my life: I typed the words “How to heal a lip blister” into Dr. Google, and then… I hit “search.” And then, even more foolishly… I selected “images.”

Horrified, but unable to look away, I scrolled through images until I found one that resembled the blister on my lip. Finally I would have answers! Surely there was an overnight magical potion that would clear up the blister… right? RIGHT?! 

“How to Recognize Lip Cancer”.

I have lip cancer? But of course I have lip cancer! Doctor Google never lies. Clearly it’s stage 3. OK, this is getting serious. Maybe it’s time to dial this back and reassess those images. I obviously clicked on the wrong one.

I went back to the images, scouring for that elusive answer. Instead, I found myself staring at herpes-covered vulvas and realized that when you type “lip” and “blister” into Google, you’ve guaranteed that you will see photos labia. And then I wondered… is labia plural or singular? If singular, perhaps the plural is labiium. Or labias? Is it… labii? (Turns out I’m not alone. And I’m confident no public or private plan covers “labia reduction,” gals. SORRY.)

Before I knew it, it was 10:30 pm and my eyes were bleeding from looking at gross lips — all manners of lips, I might add — and my head hurt and around the time I was climbing into bed, I had the magical realization that I have a wound on my lip.

And it probably just needs some time.