I come here hoping to find people who understand how upsetting this can be. I've lurked on the boards for awhile when my acne was bad, then it got better, and now it's taken a turn for the worse. My story, and I'll try to make it brief:
As a teen, I had acne that was bad. I had two courses of Accutane back then and it did wonders. My 20's were alright. I would still get a breakout every so often, but the scarring was more bothersome than anything else. I'm now in my mid-30's and after have a good 4-5 years of 90% clear skin, the past year has been a rollercoaster. I got married about a year ago and within a few months of being married, I started getting cysts. I've never had cysts before. It was horrible. My confidence plummeted. I became very depressed.
Skip to a few months later (last fall), and I'm consistently getting cysts every month. Cortisone shots just relieved the immediate cysts, but they'd come back the next month. Finally, I found a derm who put me on Doxy, Spiro, started using Duac, and switched my birth control. Within a few months, the cysts had disappeared and my skin was healing. However, I had developed severe flushing -- my guess is from stress but also feeling so embarrassed by my face, I would flush anytime anyone would look at me. Skip to Spring...
I started getting VBeam treatments to remove the redness from my skin. Oh my gosh, it was working!! It was amazing. I felt like I didn't need to wear makeup in front of my husband -- a huge step for me. I HATE wearing makeup. I wear as little as possible and if my complexion was better, I'd only wear mascara. However, a cornucopia of side effects developed and in short, I had to stop the spiro and birth control. I stopped Spiro in March and birth control three weeks ago due to continued side effects.
Skip to today: I have 5-6 cysts, mostly on my jawline, but a HUGE absolutely hideous one right by nose, front and center on my face. I feel so incredibly ugly. I can't go out, and like many of you have mentioned in your posts, I'm incredibly depressed. It's happening again. It's coming back and this is NOT some little whitehead that I don't care about. I am now even more certain this is hormonal.
Cysts are bad. They take so long to heal and now the Duac doesn't seem to be as effective. I feel so hopeless, embarrassed, ashamed and depressed. When this happened last fall, I was so depressed. I've been married for a year and I feel like I'm a different person than who my husband married. He has been so supportive, unbelievably so.
I guess my question to anyone out there, is how do you cope? How do you go out an public and have confidence? I can't even fake it right now. I keep my head down, avoid eye contact and all social situations. I hate that. I used to be outgoing, super active and happy. I've become introverted and quiet.
I'm so glad I've found this forum because while I've spoken to my mom and husband about this, I don't think they fully understand what I'm going through. I don't want to be a supermodel. I don't need perfect skin; I'll never have that. I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO SEE ME AND NOT MY HORRIFIC ACNE. Just a week ago, I couldn't believe how clear my skin had become. Now... it's 180 degrees different, and I don't know how to still be happy and confident. Thanks to anyone who has read this.
Yeah I kinda know how you feel, I went on accutane with great results in 2008 and for five years my skin was relatively good, a few rough patches after the first two years post accutane but it was under control until late last year. It just went crazy, I think it was from stopping proactiv, I tried numerous natural remedies and even went back to proactiv with no results. I'm about to turn 27 and getting acne again full force as an adult was so debilitating. I did everything I could to stop it, clean up my diet, exercise more, changed my pillowcase often, cut out certain foods, etc etc. That was the worst part for me, doing everything I could think of and having it just keep getting worse. I finally decided to go back on accutane and after almost 7 weeks, my skin is finally turning around and I can leave my house without feeling so insecure. It's great that your husband is really good about the whole thing, communication is so important because you don't want to let something like this be a strain on your relationship. Anyway, I really hope it goes away as fast as it appeared but acne tends to be uncooperative so hang in there, you will find your solution. Good luck.
Thanks, Tim714, for your response. It's so frustrating when you've been through treatments and acne has been "in remission" for years - other than some minor breakouts - and comes back and you have ZERO idea why. I did the same things as you - cut out foods, tried different foods, became really strict about my diet. I was miserable. I lost weight, probably too much. I was miserable not being able to control the acne and not even being able to enjoy food I love!
In the big picture, it's a non-terminal disease, but the psychological effects it can have on some of us are just as debilitating. I'm trying to not let that happen, but in a society that is so insanely focused on appearance, it's difficult to do.