As simple as that! I went to a million doctors and no one got it right. I fought this for 8 months and nothing worked. I got perscribed vaseline, cremes and other things meant to treat the problem from the outside instead of the inside, as it should have been.

It started with a small patch on my top upper lip and spread onto both lips. I was swollen and in horrible pain. I was depressed.. I couldn't kiss my boyfriend. I couldn't even look in the mirror without crying.

Thank god I finally found a doctor that got it right, right away. She told me that it was probably related to malabsortion. Looked at me up and down and said "make sure you eat lots of gluten, so if you are celiac, it shows up in your exam".

It's only a blood test and takes a few days to get the results back. It was positive, of course!

I WAS THRILLED. Hopeful for the first time. She told me that vitamins hadn't helped before because I couldn't absorbe them properly. I was put on a strict gluten free diet (I mean very strict.. I only ate home made food for a month because I was afraid of cross-contamination. Getting CC on your dish can be as bad as actually eating a gluten meal..). I also started taking vitamins again, to speed up the process!

My progress:
- After 1 week: No longer swollen. All I was applying was olive oil all the time, as always (I needed something soft, because hard lip balms or vaseline made me hurt when I applied it).
- After 2 weeks: EC was half its original size.. I cried from happiness. Started applying the olive oil less often because lips didn't hurt, so I forgot.
- After 3 weeks: My doctor decided to put me on desonide to speed things up, because she knew that what we were doing was working. I only applied it once a day for 7 days. My EC became only a thin line on the inner most part of both lips.
- After 4 weeks: no longer on desonide, applied only olive oil in the morning and before sleeping. EC reverted only to top middle lip and very small bits on my lower lip that I only saw when I got out of the shower, because those bits still turned white in contact with water.
- After 5 weeks: EC almost gone. Top middle lip still turned white in contact with water but it was a very small bit. Applied absolutely nothing because I didn't need it.
- After 6 weeks: EC GONE. ABSOLUTELY GONE.

It has been 3 months and it hasn't returned. I feel better than ever. This is a miracle to me.. And all you have to do is be careful and shop for a different brand when you are at the supermarket. Totally worth it.

PLEASE GET TESTED. It is only a blood test. There is no excuse not to get it done, and it may change your life for the better! Like it did for me.

And hey! If it comes out negative, at least you can rule this out.

I didn't have any other symthoms (even though I now realise that I used to be a bit bloated, but it felt normal to me at the time, so it didn't count. I can only tell in comparisson). Statistics say that around 1 in 100 people is celiac! So the odds are in your favor if, like me, you have also tried everything and just want to get the proper diagnosis! :)

Best of luck, and may celiac's be with you! :)