I first noticed a weird white spot on my top lip about three years ago, and it has stubbornly remained there ever since. I went to a number of dermatologists who diagnosed it variously as: sebaceous glands, cheilitis from indigestion, or just as nothing. I've tried treating it with prescription-strength antivirals (in case it was herpes), prescription-strength antifungals, tretinoin for exfoliation, and most recently a topical steroid cream prescribed by a dermatologist who thought it looked like eczema. I have also tried various vitamin supplements and home remedies like using honey or calendula tincture. I've tried to dig it out with a sterilized needle too, but the white spot was still there unchanged when the skin healed.
It's not raised and it doesn't hurt. For a long time it didn't seem to be spreading, and the doctors I went to all assured me it wasn't anything contagious -- none of the people I've kissed in the last three years seem to have caught anything similar. But since I started using the topical steroid cream a few months ago I've started to notice redness and weird spots in other areas around my mouth too.
What concerns me is that the first spot appeared about a month or 6 weeks after I took a trip to China, during which I had a very rough straight razor shave and I worry that the razor wasn't properly sterilized and I may have caught something weird that these (European and American) doctors are not recognizing.
I only recently stumbled upon oral HPV as a possible explanation while browsing the internet, and now I'm getting paranoid that it has been HPV all along and that I've been passing it on to other people without knowing about it.
Am I just going crazy?