Acne.org Products
I'm a 22 year old female who suffers from severe cystic acne. I had perfect skin until I turned 18, and my skin became oily and flared up with cystic acne out of the blue. 4 years of severe acne left me with deep pores (mostly from acne, as my cheeks were covered with cysts) and horrible scars, as well as textural problems.
I wish I had better medical advice when this all started so I could prevent all this (went to a dermatologist when I was 18 and he put me on very low dose accutane and acne came back). Now I'm starting a 6 month 40mg plan that I hope will end this excruciating experience. My doc is already suggesting lasers after my treatment, but I know lasers don't work for a lot of people and I seem to scar easily. I simply cannot bear the thought of my skin getting any worse. I've managed to put myself together and built a future for myself despite my appearance, but recently I feel I'm at the end of my rope, you know, not having a single chance to feel pretty or just average-looking during my youth.
Please let me know if you have any advice on scar treatment. I appreciate it so very much and truly wish the very best for those who are suffering from acne and acne scars. You all are beautiful and I hope we can all be strong in this.
Hi there, I see your on 40mg Accutane it looks like. While treating on Accutane you should not treat for Acne Scaring. It can actually make your skin worse as you have no ability to heal (skin is thinned out, very dry). Some of the effects of Accutane need to baseline back to normal after your done. This is why Dermatologists say wait 6 months until your done with Accutane to do any skin treatments. Your skin is not very bad and some of it will improve after you heal from Accutane. I see textural surface pitting most likely Boxcar. I suggest when you are done and heal up find somewhere to do some TCA Spot peels on your cheeks. I would also look into microneedling (most people manual dermastamp / derminator is a machine many use) in between your acid peel treatments when your not healing or treating. In fact I think you might get away with 2 or 3 peels and have great results. I see no major fat deficiency or pitting. To learn more about peels goto the faq, very top post of the scar sub and scroll down to acid peels, ... great link there as well with tons of info on how to do it. If your major concern is the redness / wounds ... goto the faq and the PIE section for treatments.
Thank you so much for taking the time to address my concerns. I am starting to feel hopeful again.
I am planning to get treatment after my accutane course. I've considered TCA peels, but I seem to have very thin/sensitive skin (maybe from previous accutane) and mostly large pores/scars that I am afraid of enlarging from peels, as shown in the picture below. Do you think TCA cross or subsicion will help in my case? (I do like the idea of a dermaroller)
Thanks again.
Thank you for your reply. Yes, I plan to try microneedling once I finish the treatment.
As for choosing accutane, I know there are a lot of controversies. I got dry eyes, possibly exacerbated my IBS and may have got some sort of depression (not sure if it's from accutane or crushed self esteem) from my last low dose treatment. I tried some antibiotics, including doxycycline, but they all seem to work until I stop taking them, and every time I do, I break out and almost every acne leads to a scar, as you can see from the pictures. I would choose another treatment if it can permanently cure my acne, but I can't risk getting any more scars. In fact, I got all these scars because I wasted my time looking for alternative treatment in the past three years. For less severe/non-scarring cases, I would recommend other treatments, but I'm afraid it's the best bet for me.
Thanks for for your input.
Your skin isnt bad,the way you describe yourself you would think it was realy bad.still,if you got something there and want rid of it then you are right to want that,if you can look better then why not?
looks to me in the last post and others you got small bocar,ice puck type scars,tca cross will sirt them out as long as they are not too wide.for the stuff thats wide you can tca peel.