I had gone for over 15 years without getting a cold sore. Then, 2½ months ago in February (right smack dab in the middle of DC’s “Snowmageddon 2010”), I ended up with two cold sores at the same time – one in the center of my lower lip and a matching one on my upper lip. (I’m assuming they were cold sores because they looked like cold sores, though they didn’t hurt one bit!) They popped out a few hours after I had used my Chapstick, so I thought that I must have had some kind of reaction to this product even though this didn’t seem plausible because I had been using this tube for many months and no one else had touched it. After a couple weeks, the cold sores were completely gone and I forgot all about them.
Matching cold sores on my top and bottom lip.
Then, yesterday afternoon I ate an apple, and as I was finishing it, I felt a strange sensation on my lower lip. Oh, crap! I knew right away what that familiar tingle was. How could I be getting another cold sore! (This is more of a rhetorical question.) But, as the hours have passed, that’s exactly what it is, though once again it doesn’t hurt.
New cold sore on my bottom lip.
Hmmm… So, after a 15+ year hiatus, what is suddenly causing me to get cold sores?
Being one to document everything, I took a photo of my most recent cold sore. I blew the picture up to get a closer look at the sore, when I noticed – lo and behold – a black hair growing out of my chin (sorry, you don't get to see a picture of this!). Oh, don’t you love menopause! (Another rhetorical question.) I already have so many things going on with my chin: a mole right under my lower lip (its sister lives right next door), a super-enlarged pore, a zit on the tip of my chin, and now a black hair.
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Thank goodness for tweezers!
