wineglass

Hi. I'm a little new here and hope this is the right place for this. A little background: I’ve had moderate to severe acne since around age 12, now 22, with moderate being the norm that once and a while would change in short severe breakouts of cystic acne. Last year I finally caved and went to a derm who prescribed me 200mg of Doxycycline and Epiduo. I was on the antibiotics for 7 months under supervision and then I weaned myself off, and probably a little quickly at that. It stayed clear for 3 months and then it came back horribly. My mother was so upset she hauled me back to the dermatologist…who wanted to stick me right back on doxycycline. I was almost tempted to do it, but something seemed wrong about the way the acne was coming back. I was right. It cleared up a little for a couple of weeks although it was still worse than normal, but with cycling of hormones for girls at the beginning of this month I severely broke out again in cystic acne, worse than I ever had and have been going through that for two weeks now.

The infections have gotten so bad they burrow under the skin leaving dime and penny sized cysts. Sometimes I can’t move half of my face because of the swelling. Yesterday a small spot cropped up, inflammed and went under the skin, and now I can’t breathe out of my right nostril because of its size and the pressure on my sinuses. A lymph node has become irritated and been going up and down all month, swelling under my jaw. Other than this, I’m perfectly healthy and don’t feel ill at all. Although I am insanely stressed by this.

I’m making an appointment with my GP this week because I don’t know what else to do. Throwing a hail mary I’ve severely limited my diet within the last month, eliminating sugar, dairy, eggs, wheat, gluten, soy,  processed foods, white/bleached flours, excessive fruit, and preservatives.  I tried to avoid spikes in blood sugar. Previously an already health conscious  semi-vegetarian who ate fish, I resulted to adding a bit of antibiotic free, vegetarian fed chicken to get enough protein with all the limitation.  I’ve been taking zinc, turmeric with black pepper, D, E, probiotics, fish oil, and a multivitamin. Aside from dropping from 110 lbs to 102 lbs in two weeks it has done nothing.  

Does anyone have any advice at all about what I should be doing at this point or what I should be asking my doctor when I go in? I have a feeling she is also going to take one look and want to prescribe an antibiotic to clear the infection, and I think I’d rather face Freddy Krueger than that right now.