Tyrean

My son is on day 46 and his derm says yes, it works from the top down.  His forehead is the clearest part of his face now, when it used to be the worst.  It definitely seems to be clearing from top down.  His neck is worse than it ever was, with many more cysts, sort of like yours.   Chest/back are another story altogether

 

Hope you have a positive experience and it clears you     

Yeah I think that's how it is for most, guess it could work differently for everyone. And my forehead is also the clearest, although it never got much acne to begin with. My neck is definitely the worst part right now as well, but tell him to keep trudging through because I heard month 3/4 are the real turnaround months.

Thanks, and best of luck with his course as well!

readytolive: interesting for sure. guess it does work differently for everyone!

Day 81

My acne's still clearing slowly but surely, face looks much better than it did. The only problem is, my elbow joints have been KILLING me, today especially. I've been drinking joint juice, taking fish oil, just seems like they're not helping anymore. I really don't want to lower my dose and I don't know what to do   i keep hoping its just a phase and it'll pass. Before taking this medication my elbow joints have always been kinda bad because I would always pop them as a kid, so now I have to deal with the consequences of them being slightly weak where I'm at today. Makes sense that this medication would multiply the pain, guess I'm just gonna see where the pain level is in a day or so.

But yeah as far as pain, I was planning on playing basketball tonight but there's no way I could, it hurts to the point of bending my arm so shooting the ball would be practically impossible. 

Hey readytolive,

As far as side effects going away, that can happen. I'm on my third month and was just bumped up from 60 to 80mg/day and I noticed my lips are actually getting less dry, however other side effects like lower back pain are kicking in so I wouldn't worry too much about side effects going away, its only a plus!

For your weight of 120 pounds, for the low end of 120mg/kg you'll want about 6,500 mg of accutane in your system. For the high end of 150mgkg, you'll want about 8,100 mg of accutane. 40 mg a day is fine for you for a 5-6 month course, I don't know exactly how long you were planning to stay on it, but you can definitely crunch some numbers from those totals to see if you could get done quicker. Just know it's not the daily dose that matters, but it's the cumulative dosage.

Things will get better for you, you just gotta hang in there. I was in the same position you were, hating life after the 1 month mark because I felt like NO results were coming at all. In fact, my face was worse than before getting on this drug. It all started to get better around the Week 10 mark for me. I do have one stubborn pimple right now on my cheek that's inflamed, but it's my fault for popping it ...with a few other areas that are annoying like my neck, not to mention a lot of red marks/redness from pre-existing acne, but it is getting better each day!

So hang in there and days will start flying by! Best of luck

I can't wait either!

Day 71

More side effects are definitely starting to show up, could be from the increased dosage but i'm gonna be a warrior and not ask to come down. I want this course to be as quick as possible. But as far as the new side effects I'm definitely experiencing lower back pain and I get random sharp pain in my elbow joints mainly. I've started taking fish oil and joint juice that will hopefully help that out!

Also wondering, is it true accutane works from the top down? It seems like it's working well on my face so far, but my neck and the little bit I have on my mid-chest hasn't improved. Just a random thought

hahaha richard you're definitely not the first person to think that, i've just used this name forever, even on different forums dont know why!

Yeah man thanks for the words of encouragement, honestly it's progressed a lot, like you said the acne turned real crusty and pretty much fell off. Now i'm just left with all these red marks but it's part of the course i guess.

Like i said though I just didn't feel like taking updated pictures yet because from the camera it looks almost the same... it's just most of the acne's not there anymore, it's just the red marks. Hopefully my skin will be less red soon!