well here it goes!

About four years ago i developed very severe nodular cystic acne. What started out as your normal whitehead bacne quickly escalated into one of the worst cases most doctors i went to had seen. I used to have a posting up about my fight and problems and i removed a while back. I am finally here to recap and review and to ask for advice on this new proposal into permanently curing this issue from my body. The photos posted will show what i had to go through, days, weeks, and months of over 50 open cysts that would re open and bleed all over my clothes, bedsheets, and pretty much anything my back touched. It was a norm for me to wake up in the morning stuck to my bed because the cysts had dried up with the bedsheets, fusing me to my bed. Every morning was a series of dealing with the pain and ripping myself out of bed. 

     After numerous dermatologist trips, no one knew what to do. It started with doxycycline, and then bactrum, and minocycline. Finally i found a dermatologist that was making progress with improving my acne and finally helping me start the uphill fight. She hit me with the accutane. after 3 weeks and a crap ton of cortisone, my body gave up. I had upped the dosage to 40mg per day and the flare ups caused all the cysts on my back to double. It was living hell. It wasnt thee accutane that gave me depression, it was living with all the cysts afterward. Plan B was to start me on a high dose of doxycycline so inflammation would recede and allow some of the cysts to clear up. 

Two years later, i was acne free. the occasional cyst would show up on my back, and my face was that of a normal teenagers with normal acne. and well my back has turned into that of a freak show, with deep big connecting scars that look like that of a burn victim (made for a cool "i was in a fire cover up story).

And now here we are in the summer of 2017. 

Doxycycline has become ineffective, so i stopped taking it. after a couple months i still had no acne and was used to the occasional back cyst that would come up and dry away after a couple of weeks on its own. 

graduation and senior year ended with a very bad mishap. I was jumped and suffered a broken jaw, surgery and meds along with all the trauma and stress really threw me off of my clear skin streak, and the flares restarted. 

in a quick burst, now my chest has broken out in the "stage one" cysts. These are what i call the small cysts that later turn into the huge ones that i had on my back. I quickly used some of my own medical knowledge and past experience to fight this. I started on 1000mg of fish oil, 50 mg of zinc, and twice a day probiotic pills respectively; along with using a tretinoin  topical cream for my face (0.05%), my face has returned to its nice and 95% clear state. My chest has drastically reduced, there are no new flare ups, and now they are slowly going away. 

now i know this is only a temporary solution to this ever plaguing problem i have been dealing with on my back and now chest, and being on vacation in lebanon, i decided to go for a second opinion to a very well known dermatologist in Beirut. After  the initial consultation, she saw all the scars on my back and the new cysts on my chest, and immediately prescribed me accutane. Im ready to pull the trigger again on this drug, but she gave me a very odd and apparently "new protocol" to taking this drug for people that have severe nodular cystic acne.

for the next 6 weeks i will be on tetralysal 300 in order to reduce the inflammation around the cysts and to clear up my body so i can start taking accutane. But here is the weird dosage idea. Apparently here in the middle east and europe, this is a very common route to take to combat this type of acne. she wants to put me on 10mg a day, every other day for 8 weeks. If my body can handle it she wants to up the dosage to 20mg a day every other day or, if i cant handle it, to keep me on the 10mg cycle for another 8 weeks. Basically she said im looking at 2 years on accutane. The attractive side to this is i can expect little to no normal accutane side effects, and i will be able to prevent the "first month flare up" that accutane causes when taken normally. I dont know about this i feel like im going to be a guinea pig for this weird trial type regiment. 

Please feel free to lerave your opinions/experiences with low dosage accutane, and hopefully this will be my last fight i have to fight with this dumb acne!!