My Accutane Journey

I was fortunate growing up not knowing the feeling of wanting to lock myself in the bathroom when I was a teenager when a breakout threatened to ruin my day.  I rarely had a bad breakout and thank goodness I'm a girl that allows me to wear makeup and cover up any flaw that I wanted to hide.

Until now...

I'm 42 years old and I've been battling acne for years.  I blame my children for screwing up my hormones, among other items on my list that I blame my kids for: droopy boobs, bigger-than-acceptable butt and a stomach with train tracks that I'll never be able to wear a two-piece bathing suit for the rest of my life.  My battle with hormones has been endless with mood swings so high and so low, that sometimes even I don't want to be around myself.

I have tried just about every product on the market for my acne.  EVERYTHING makes me break out.  That is no exaggeration. I started making a list of ingredients that were potential enemies of my skin and although avoiding certain ones seemed to make my skin look better, I would end up breaking out again a couple days later.  After eliminating ingredients such as hydrogen peroxide, any and all kinds of exfoliants, any of the acids such as salicylic acid, parabens, mineral oil, and fragrance, any kind of positive results proved null and void.  It didn't matter what I used.  I even started making a list of foods that I suspected of breakouts:

Chocolate
Wheat/Gluten
Cinnamon
Sugar
Dairy

Then I moved on to cosmetics.  Cheap makeup made my skin worse (shocker!) all the way to the $30+ foundations and concealers.  I even tried the expensive overnight serums.  Again, nothing worked.

My lowest day was when I thought a spray tan would even out my skin tone and hide some of my acne.  For the first time in my life, I wanted to lock myself in the bathroom and never come out.  I was stupid enough to get that spray tan on a workday and had to go to work looking like a got a bad spray tan on top of horrific acne.

I am too old for this crap. 

This process has taken me years to get to this point and reaching my lowest day finally made me realize I needed help.  I visited my doctor who had given me hormonal birth control pills and a low-dose antibiotic.  Yup, you guessed it... that didn't work either.  The antibiotics interfered with the birth control pills so once I stopped taking those, which gave me the world's worse heartburn anyway, I started noticing some improvement after three months of birth control.

But I was STILL breaking out. 

I went to a dermatologist and after prescribing me more antibiotics (and more heartburn agony) did she recommend me taking Accutane.

Because I am a woman of childbearing age, I've had to jump over obstacles and basically sign my life away because the side effects of accutane are incredible if I should get pregnant.  I must take every precaution to not get pregnant (already there!) and I am required to be on two forms of birth control (done and done!) and I must have blood work done each month before I can get my next refill.

This is all because my dermatologist said this is the only thing that is going to get rid of my acne. 

It has nothing to do with the products I'm using, the food I eat or the air I breathe. It's just the way I am.  Lucky me.

I am going to blog about my journey with accutane because acne has been such a huge part of my life, I hope I can help someone else out there who also struggles with acne.  This is one of the questions I will ask God someday... why? why? why?  Life is unfair and cruel on this earth, why do we have to deal with ickyness on our FACE (and mosquitos)???

I am not going to post pictures yet. I have my worst day picture but because it has taken such a huge chunk of my self confidence away, I'm not ready to share that photo yet.  To me, it is that bad.

We are our own worst critic.

Thank you for taking this journey with me. I am looking forward to be rid of acne permanently, gain confidence back and maybe even stabilize my dreadful hormones.