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Day 13: got 2 big ones both on my left jaw. This is a major setback now since all of these are in the area that gets a lot of PIH and small scars. To have 4 big acne there (if you count end of last month) plus small ones is now going to force me to wear makeup everywhere i go again. GREAT. JUST FUCKING GREAT. These pills will never help. The one on the chin wasn't big, so 2 so far this month. fucking ridiculous.
Hi ya llc,
I've been following your log. Although I'm not on bcp, I am on spiro, so I understand completely the frustration. Its so hard to be patient. Totally sucks to experience the breakouts. I was basically clear for 4 weeks, but yet once again experiencing cysts again, ughhhh!!
Hopefully we will both achieve clear skin soon!
Hi ya llc,
I've been following your log. Although I'm not on bcp, I am on spiro, so I understand completely the frustration. Its so hard to be patient. Totally sucks to experience the breakouts. I was basically clear for 4 weeks, but yet once again experiencing cysts again, ughhhh!!
Hopefully we will both achieve clear skin soon!
Aww, I'm sorry. It sucks so much, sometimes it really makes it impossible to enjoy your day and think of anything else. I have been dealing with this for a year and a half now, I think this is the longest I've gone without anything working since I discovered birth control at 15 years old... For the past year it gets better then gets worse all the time... once it gets better you think ok, finally something is working. but then next month you get a breakout and new marks and scars which sets you back months if not a year. it's so hard mentally. *hugs* I'm scared of continuing saw palmetto now because now i'm paranoid that it's causing more acne. I'm sure you know what it's like, thinking you might potentially get a bunch of new scars when you could have avoided it (maybe?) if you stopped this or that. It really messes with your head. I cut back on sugar a lot in the past week, ironically this has been the worst week in a while for me acne wise. go figure...
Have you tried anything other than spiro? have you made any progress while on spiro? I'm really bummed I can't take it because it gives me sore throat which is apparently pretty bad so I never got past one pill lol.
I have tried everythingggg, and I mean everything!!
I've been dealing with acne for 30 years, yes 30 years. It was manageable up until my early 40s, i'm now 47. I never had a cyst till I hit my early 40s, boy did that change everything. I cannot believe I have worse skin than I did when I was young, very annoying.
It is so frustrating when you get that hope of thinking something is finally working, and then the breakouts come again. I can handle regular pimples, I mean I rather not get them of course, but I can handle them. Its the cysts that just crush me, I get really big ones.
Beginning of this year I had tried DIM, and broke out horrendously, I kept on it bc it really eased my menstrual cramps and I kept thinking it just had to kick in. After a few months of breaking out horribly I added saw palmetto. When I did that I had 3 months of clear skin, it was awesome. I truly felt like I finally found my "cure". After the 3 months tho, my skin broke out horribly. That's also when basically my skin went absolutely crazy. I was getting cysts every single day, when usually I would get 3 tops a month.
Through the years I think I have been on every topical known to man. Nothing really sustained clarity. A couple of years ago I tried Accutane. I quit after a month bc it wreaked havoc on my eyes. It was really bad. If I was towards the end of my course I might have stayed on, but I had 4 more months to go. My eyes still aren't 100%.
I started spiro beginning of September, I'm a little over 12 weeks in. The first 2 months were absolutely horrible, but then like 4 weeks ago I started to clear. I thought I was on my way to sustained clear skin. Not to be 
.. Sunday night started to form a cyst, by Monday night it was HUGE..and started to form another. Right now I feel even another one forming. Its like seriously, wtf???
Do you use any topicals? I have an arsenal, I don't even know what to use anymore!
I have tried everythingggg, and I mean everything!!
I've been dealing with acne for 30 years, yes 30 years. It was manageable up until my early 40s, i'm now 47. I never had a cyst till I hit my early 40s, boy did that change everything. I cannot believe I have worse skin than I did when I was young, very annoying.
It is so frustrating when you get that hope of thinking something is finally working, and then the breakouts come again. I can handle regular pimples, I mean I rather not get them of course, but I can handle them. Its the cysts that just crush me, I get really big ones.
Beginning of this year I had tried DIM, and broke out horrendously, I kept on it bc it really eased my menstrual cramps and I kept thinking it just had to kick in. After a few months of breaking out horribly I added saw palmetto. When I did that I had 3 months of clear skin, it was awesome. I truly felt like I finally found my "cure". After the 3 months tho, my skin broke out horribly. That's also when basically my skin went absolutely crazy. I was getting cysts every single day, when usually I would get 3 tops a month.
Through the years I think I have been on every topical known to man. Nothing really sustained clarity. A couple of years ago I tried Accutane. I quit after a month bc it wreaked havoc on my eyes. It was really bad. If I was towards the end of my course I might have stayed on, but I had 4 more months to go. My eyes still aren't 100%.
I started spiro beginning of September, I'm a little over 12 weeks in. The first 2 months were absolutely horrible, but then like 4 weeks ago I started to clear. I thought I was on my way to sustained clear skin. Not to be .. Sunday night started to form a cyst, by Monday night it was HUGE..and started to form another. Right now I feel even another one forming. Its like seriously, wtf???
Do you use any topicals? I have an arsenal, I don't even know what to use anymore!
Wow, that is quite a struggle. I started getting acne when I was 10. I always knew it was hormonal, and at 14-15 I started taking diane 35. It cleared me up amazingly. My skin was great. I never stayed on it for more than 3 months, and the results still lasted for years. At 18 my skin was starting to get gross again so i went on Yasmin. It cleared up fast. I went off of it in a few months, only to have a disastrous breakout within a few months after quitting. I tried going back on it but for some reason it gave me chest pain and panic attacks, so I went with yaz instead which is lower dose. Again, cleared. I kept taking it and on month 7 or so I was breaking out slightly. I then went on a trip and forgot my pack, so I stopped cold turkey for 2 weeks. When I got back 2 weeks later I immediately restarted. I think that was the worst decision of my life. It's been like 1.5 years since then and I still get these big breakouts I never used to get in my life. They're very deep and leave dark red marks and tiny scars. For 1.5 years I've gone on/off the pill, now I've been on yaz for a year and I still won't stop breaking out in nodules. How big is your cystic acne? Like in diameter? I don't know what to call mine. They're pea sized most of the time and can linger for months. I also break out in tiny ones on top of my nose like non stop. That is also new.
I use generic azelaic acid cream which I believe does help with small ones and maybe exfoliates and brings down big ones a little, but I don't think it does anything for preventing the nodular/cystic acne. My daily wash is olay soap as my skin cannot handle acid because it gives me broken spider veins :/ Other than that I use apricot scrub by st ives and clay masks. I think inositol did help me, as I tried lowering the dose by half due to being drowsy, and had a bad acne month after that. For me Inositol seems to cut the amount of big breakouts in like half, which is pretty decent.
My cysts are usually pea sized too, and dang do they get so red. I'm fair skinned so they really stand out. I'm a cortisone shot junkie, I just cant bear having them sit on my face. I have gotten so many shots in the last few months I lost count.
Its funny when I started to get cystic acne 5 years ago, it was always on my left cheek, nowhere else. My poor left cheek took a beating. But I would always have bouts of clear skin. I would get one or two cysts, get them shot, and all wld be ok for awhile. That changed a few months ago, that's when the cysts became chronic. They would just keep coming and coming, and it was all over my chin area. I rarely ever broke out on my chin, so it was bizarre. Now its my chin that's taking the beating, I don't even know how a cyst finds a new place, I feel like every single pore on my chin has had a cyst. I have never had a cyst on my right cheek or my forehead. I wish my whole face looked like my right cheek, no scars, no marks.
The last cyst I got which happened on Monday was literally one of the biggest cysts I've ever gotten. It was a lima bean, so frkn swollen. I went for cortisone shot on Tuesday and even my derm was like , "wow, that is pretty big". Usually shots work pretty fast for me, by the next day i'll see significant improvement. Not this one, I seriously thought the shot got messed up somehow. This morning finally it seems to be going down. I guess it was frkn big it took awhile. I have a feeling though I'm going to have one of those underskin bumps that last forever with this one. I'll take it tho, as long its not a stupid red lump sitting on my face. The cyst freaked me out totally just bc it was truly one of the largest ones I have ever gotten, and being on spiro for almost 3 months its bewildering. UGHHHH!!
I use aveeno ultra calming face wash most of the time, and sometimes use panoxyl bp wash. I used to use acanya in the morning and tazorac in the evening. Then my derm thought I should try aczone, so I tried that for awhile. When that wasn't working I got scrip for clindamycin gel. I think my fav still is the acanya, taz combo but when I started to breakout in all the cysts, it seemed irritating. Also I know bp slows down the healing process of red marks. I think the taz was thinning out my skin too much. So basically ive been using the clindamycin, but I just started to incorporate taz back in. All very confusing lol.
Today my skin does seem clamer. I had a spot on my chin that I thought was turning into something big, it seems to be at a standstill at being an annoying lump, thank god!
Hope you're having a good skin day, well a good day all around 
Hmmmm. The biggest cyst I've ever had was on my shoulder a few months ago, it was so deep It wasn't even visible on the surface of my skin. I could feel a pretty big bump though. I've never gotten cortisone injections. I usually apply some polysporin and let it sit there for hours every day until the thing goes down. Sometimes I take ibuprofen and that helps bring it down to. I might actually start crushing my ibuprofen pills and applying them directly to my face. Have you tried it? Or the gel form? Ugh yesterday I found another deep breakout on my right cheek. It doesn't seem that big though it is pretty deep. I don't know if it counts as a nodule or not. Yesterday was the last day of cycle. I guess we'll see how this month goes.
I have never tried crushing ibuprofen pills or the gel, but always wanted to! If you try, please tell me how it goes. My skin seems to be back on track, keeping my fingers crossed!
Sorry to hear about your breakout ..Hopefully it goes away fast!
Hoping December is a good month for both of us!
I found a cyst on my left shoulder/back the size of a penny! I think it started in the last days of last cycle though, so 8 last month! And this one is so huge. I wonder if it's free testosterone causing this since saw palmetto increases free testosterone by lowering DHT. I wonder if this just won't work for me. Unless I take a lot of inositol to counter the free testosterone? I'm not sure what to do.
Day 23: the cyst on my left cheek seems bigger now even though it's already been around 4 days I've had it. I increased my Inositol dosage today from 600mg to 900mg, which is 1/8 teaspoon three times a day, or same amount twice a day (1/4 in the morning and 1/8 at night). We'll see how this goes.
Day 28: A breakout on my back seems to have gotten bigger after a few days and is now a smaller papule/nodule. sooo 4? only 1 of them never really inflamed that much, one shrunk within a day, and this one seems smaller than regular shoulder breakouts I get. I guess progress.
Day 8: It's only 1 week into the cycle and I have 2 more cysts growing on my chin... I'm really confused. I had this amount at the END of last month. I really don't get what's going on. 4 in just a week...
I bumped up my Inositol to 1200mg (from 900mg). The cysts seem to have become whiteheads, though not any smaller. Another one on my nostril, so 5.
Day 11: Got another papule on my left jawline near neck (under ear). Hmm. Am I taking too much Inositol? I might lower it back. Honestly it seems no matter what I do I get one bad then one good month and it starts all over, I'm not making any progress...
UPDATE: Just realized there was a cyst under a whitehead on my chin. HOLY CRAP that's 7 cyst like acne. Today alone I woke up with 2. That's crazy... yeah, gonna go back down to 900mg. Though honestly I don't even know if that's it anymore. My skin was shitty all first week of the cycle even though that's the only week I actually usually get to have a break. I am lost for words. Nice follow up to a good month.