I've never made a post on this site before, but I would like to share my experiences since reading the posts on this forum have helped me a lot. A bit of background, I am a 24 year old Korean and I have really pale skin and have had good skin until maybe a year ago when I did an internship. I was really stressed being in a country I have never been in and my job was demanding. As a result of my lack of sleep every night and the constant stress, I had a really bad case of cystic acne for 4 months. When I was there, I sought out help and got some doxycycline and it seemed to make things a lot better, minus the nausea, but I dealt with it.

When I got back home, I started taking better care of my body, started using a oil-free cleanser often and my acne subsided completely (even without doxycycline), but I had to face some nasty ice pick scars on my cheeks. My skin was also very 'bumpy' from hypertrophic scars that resulted from the constant inflammation I am guessing. Anyway, I started off my treatment with some rosehip oil, but that didn't help too much. I moved on to coconut oil and it did seem a lot better. I would just put some on my skin every night before I slept and it seemed to plump up my skin.

One day, I read somewhere that the coconut oil should be massaged on, so I firmed rubbed my face with the oil, not really paying attention and watching Netflix. The next day, my hypertrophic improved a lot. Just one day of rubbing my face with oil worked wonders so I did that for a while and the oil really helped because it reduced friction, making it easier to rub and after a couple weeks of that, my skin evened out pretty much completely; I felt great.

But as my skin evened out, I noticed my post inflammatory hyperpigmentation (I heard Koreans often have that) and ice pick scars a bit more. I tried dermarolling at home, but after around 5 treatments of that, it didn't improve my ice pick scars, so I stopped doing that. Instead, I ordered some Retin-A gel and a vitamin C solution online. I applied both before I slept, but after a while, I realized that vitamin C was the only one that seemed to be most effective, my skin got less oily, the hyperpigmentation faded a bit and my ice pick scars seemed to look more like healthier skin.

After reading about TCA cross on the forums, I decided to try it out. I ordered it online and I also got some Fucidin cream my dermatologist to apply before and during the healing process. The Fucidin cream was a miracle. It really gave my skin a nice boost and kept it from breaking out entirely. I also have some coagulation issues, so I got some transexamic acid from my doctor. Turn out the tranexamic acid is a miracle drug against hyperpigmentation ( http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperDownload.aspx?paperID=20101 ). I have been taking 500mg per day for a couple week now and I can tell you, for Koreans at least, it is a miracle. I had a bout of scabies earlier this year and had some PIH on my arms and that is starting to disappear as well. I wouldn't recommend this drug to anyone though because for normal people, it can cause a lot more complications, but for someone like me with thrombocytopenia, I was a really rare exception. The PIH on my face got remarkably better as well. What a stroke of luck.

When I did the TCA cross at home with a 100% solution I bought online, I decided to do it with some toothpicks from the grocery store, but I could only find some Korean branded ones which were made of bamboo (?) not wood. I applied the TCA cross on my ice pick scars, but much to my dismay it didn't frost at all, unlike the pictures I have seen online. I realized later on that it was because the bamboo toothpicks really don't absorb any liquids very well, but I did a quick 2 second dab on each ice pick scar and applied some fucidin cream after 12 hours to start the healing process.

Surprisingly, the scars started to fill in right away, even after 12 hours. I've read that this might be due to the fact that the skin is swollen and didn't think too much of it, but throughout the next couple of days, it didn't subside and it stayed like that. I noticed that the skin in my ice pick scars started to get flaky and crusted, but it was definitely not scabbing. To this day, it looks great and in my hypothesis, I believe it may have been because I really didn't apply a lot. The acid was entirely limited to inside the ice pick scar and that might have helped too.

All in all, a lot of my ice pick scars have filled in almost entirely! I went from severe acne scarring with PIH to almost pre-acne skin through a lot of luck (I believe) and I would like to share my experiences. I still have some ice pick scars on my cheeks that haven't filled in completely and I will do another TCA cross for that. I have received formal education in biology and I find that a lot of people on this forum don't properly understand the mechanics of a lot of these treatments, so I have to recommend that people should attempt to learn a little about the science behind these treatments before trying them out. It really helped that I understood the meaning behind the procedures and gave me the confidence to try them out and move on even when at times, my results weren't what I hoped to see. At times, I felt like my journey was hopeless, but I am really glad it turned out the way it did. It is hard to look towards a positive future when things are bad, but if you take things one step at a time, anyone can get through anything. I hope that this post answers the questions for people who are looking to change as I have and feel free to ask me any questions!