My Story

I am 34, and fairly average. I am married, with kids, and a librarian. I live in Nebraska. Of course, I have my flaws and one of them is that I have terrible skin. I have acne on my shoulders, neck, back and face. But my face is by far my biggest trouble spot.

At the age of nine, my mother took me to my first dermatologist, for what would be a lifetime battle with acne. I have had multiple prescriptions for different topical applications like benzoil peroxide, sulfur, retin-a, and all sorts of medicines that are combinations of them. I am terrible with names of things, sorry, I don't think I could write a comprehensive list of the topical meds I have used for my face, in my entire lifetime, and do it any justice, as it would be a pretty long list. However, as far as I am aware, most of the medicines used those key ingredients in an effort to stop pimples.

In addition to the topical medicines, there was usually a prescription of pills to help from the inside out. Antibiotics of all sorts have been given to me, for most of my life to slow or stop my pimples.

In my early 20's I completed one 6 month cycle of Accutane. Accutane was supposed to cure my acne for the rest of my life. Guess what? It didn't. It helped for a couple years, but now, in my mid-30's any help it had offered is long gone.

Most of these medicines had side effects! I hated being on almost all of them. The antibiotics gave me gut issues, not wanting to offer tmi here, but IBS-style symptoms were something I had to deal with anytime I was on antibiotics for my skin. Doctors told me I was nuts (okay, not literally), but they definitely did not believe that my stomach issues came from antibiotics. Funny how when I would come off of the antibiotics and supplement with some probiotics, my stomach issues would go away.

The topical medicines caused a lot of redness, burning,and irritation, and sometimes rashes. Some caused sun heightening effects, requiring that I used sunscreen on my face, or dealt with frequent, intense sunburn on my face, especially my nose. Of course, the sunscreens all broke me out, lol.

And Accutane had more side effects then all the rest, suffice it to say that taking that stuff was BAD. And the effects are not all noticable, I believe Accutane can cause bone density issues and stuff like that, that I may not know about or find out for many years. All that and the chance to create an alien baby! (Accutane can cause SEVERE birth defects and must be used by females in conjunction with multiple bith control methods and routine pregnancy screenings.)

So, anyways, this is my attempt to tell you that I hated all these medicines, and had some kind of side effects from all of them. By my 30's I had really given up. I just dealt with the acne, it seemed the lesser of two evils. But let me explain. My acne is bad. I get all kinds of pimples, white heads, blackheads, and cystic pimples which are similar to boils, but never come to the surface, they are large red painful places, and can last for years. On average, I would say that I currently dealt with 2-3 new pimples each day, and 1-2 cystic pimples on my face each year.

I do what I can to reduce my skin issues. I wash my face night and day, I avoid touching my face with my hands, try to keep my hair off my face, I use non-comedogenic stuff on my face, I use special shampoo and conditioner, and cover my pillows with allergy liners, special laundry detergents too. All this work, and all I could aim for was to not make my face worse.

Of course, there were a zillion over the counter products that I have tried in my lifetime. Most everything on Walmart's shelves for acne and excess oil, with no better results. I have also tried Proactive, Murad, Acne Free, Mary Kay, Avon, tea tree oil soaps, hawthorn oil soap from the health food store.

Lucky for me, I was born a girl, and at least I get to wear make up, to try and cover my skin. Even my make up has to be special, since my skin is so oily most make up is gone within a couple hours.