I started to get acne in 2011 when I was 26. It literally hit me out of nowhere. It started out on my neck, especially under my chin and it spread down and gradually up. It progressively got worse. When it first began I went to the doctor and they gave me antibiotics, but I wasn't on them very long because they really hurt my stomach. I tried proactive twice. Then I became pregnant in late 2011. It stayed the same if not continued to get worse. I couldn't do much while I was pregnant, but I did try a few antibiotic creams. I can't remember all of the names, but none of them seemed to help any. Fast forward to May, June, July and August of this year my skin was at its worst. The products I was using were drying my face out bad. It was so red and full of cystic acne - the redness was so bad it looked like I had a horrible sunburn and the peeling was TERRIBLE! Under all of that I was full of cystic acne and whiteheads (something I didn't normally have) from the flaky skin clogging my pores. Anyway, at the beginning of August I made an appointment to get on ortho-tricyclen. I went on it, but only lasted a week. It gave me horrible panic attacks! I was constantly freaking out and thinking I had a blood clot. I even went to the emergency room convinced I had one! I stopped that day, which was the beginning of my second week. Since then my skin gradually began to get better. The cystic acne on my face went away, the only thing that was left was my horrible flaky skin because of the drying products I was using. I went and bought cetaphil face wash and moisturizer and bought a new brush for my electric face brush. Since getting off the ortho-tricyclen I saw improvement after a few weeks. Since then it keeps getting better. It got especially better when I changed to the cetaphil routine, which I think was because it helped unclog my my dry skin, especially with the help of the brush. I had one small zit on my chin that showed up with my period, but other than that basically nothing but redness from scarring (which is still baaaad). My neck is also has one cyst that turned into a huge boil that is slowly shrinking other than that nothing as well.

Do you think being on ortho-tricyclen could have thrown my hormones off enough to get them back in gear? I can't honestly think of what's causing this other than that. I was on penicillin twice for infections in September, but actually I was actually still breaking out slightly while on it and have continued to improve after I went off of it.