New member of this site. Definitely not a new member of the acne club.
I started having acne in junior year of high school. At the time they were like a few pimples and it was very manageable as I could just shrug it off. As I got through the rest of high school, things went down a slope. To keep it short, more breakouts, more pimples, more sadness. I've tried so many methods. Medicines like sulfur pads, epiduo, metrogel, etc. I've tried commercial products like proactiv, neutrogena, etc. All worked to some degree, but my acne would easily get used to it and continue to break out. I've tried changing my diet, cutting back most sugar and dairy (stopped drinking 2 cups of milk a day. I loved milk.). Nothing has worked very well for me. Today, I have a number of active pimples just scattered around my face. To make it worse, once the pimples die they leave their marks behind. The marks take forever to leave, and my skin is very fair so they are quite noticeable. To sum it all up, my face looks like a mess of pimples and marks. It has severely hurt my self esteem, my happiness, my social ability. I cannot step out of my room without thinking of my skin literally every second. It hurts physically too, as in I will always accidentally brush against a few pimples and it'll hurt. Wearing things like goggles hurt because they go over my pimples. Basically, I want it all gone.
So I went to the dermatologist recently. I was prescribed cephalexin pills, Aczone, and 0.025% tretinoin. I have been taking the cephalexin pills for about 2 weeks, twice a day. Today, I got my Aczone and tretinoin, and today is when I start my journey with them. I've heard many good things about these products, and I pray that it will help me.
Aczone every morning, tretinoin every other night at first, then every night. It is now 12:32AM, time to go to bed, and time to apply that tretinoin.
I'm having good feelings about this regimen. Let's hope I make it out.
1 Day After
Not much improvement, to be honest. My face seems the same. Of course, I know that it takes more than just one day to actually see some. I didn't really expect improvement this early.
Also, I've noticed that the tretinoin is actually not very irritating for me. I've seen people say their faaces turned red and started flaking and stuff. I have not noticed any of that at all. It doesn't hurt or sting or anything when I apply it, too. I'm probably gonna start to apply it every night, even though this is my first time with it.
2 Days After
Still not really any signs of improvement. There are, however, signs of another breakout. There are a bunch of little bumps on the lower section of my forehead, mostly concentrated around the top of my eyebrows and the region between the eyebrows. When I applied the retin a cream tonight, I noticed that the area in general became a bit red, almost like it was irritated for some reason.
Other than that, not much else has changed. Recently active pimples are healing at normal pace.
5 Days After
I guess you could say that I'm seeing some changes. Good and bad.
The good news is that my face has gotten somewhat smoother. Like it's actually kind of unbelievable when I'm washing my face in the shower and I don't feel as many pimples as I used to. It actually feels somewhat smooth too. Not as many big bumps anymore.
The bad news... it may be making my marks more darker. I've noticed that between two pictures of me now and me about a week ago, there's a noticeable difference in how red the marks are. They seem to be more red now than a week ago, according to the pictures. I have been noticing that the marks are becoming darker in general... I don't know if that's supposed to happen because of the tretinoin or what.
Still going to keep up with using the creams, though. I hope to see some good improvements sometime soon.
9 Days After
Definitely seeing some slight improvement now. The batch of pimples that were on the bottom of my right cheek are less dark, and even though there are 2 new pimples in its place, I think it looks better than before. The couple of pimples I had on my forehead are gone as well, and their marks are there, but less noticeable. Overall, I think I am liking these products. I have no idea if it's just my mindset (I've started to think way more positively) and it's all just a placebo effect or it's actually improving. But yea, my mindset is much better nowadays.
Oh, the only thing that is concerning me is this batch of little bumps between my eyebrows. There are so many of them, and they cover the whole between the eyebrow area. Probably 25, 30, 35 tiny little bumps. They bother me somewhat, because I keep having the feeling to pick them. Also, they are extremely noticeable under certain lights, and it looks really bad. I don't know if these creams are what caused them to form, or if they just happened to appear. It's only the area that is between my eyebrows/on my forehead, so maybe it's not the creams or else they would be all over my face? I don't know.
The slow and painful recovery. It sucks.
11 Days After
My face always goes in a cycle between being very smooth and having a couple or three bumps on it. Right now I'm really happy because it's very smooth now. Hopefully it doesn't go back to bumpy.
Spring is a-coming, which is good for me. For some reason, my acne is much worse in winter than in spring/summer. I really have no clue why, but it's just that.
Anyways, I'm continuing to stay with the normal routine (cephalexin pill morning and night, aczone in morning, tretinoin at night). I'm currently seeing some clear ups. Acne marks look somewhat less noticeable, and no major active pimples! This is a rare moment.
One last thing, I wanna update this log with this. I've started to do some working out, and going to the gym on a regular basis. I bought some vanilla muscle milk powder to go along with it. I am fully aware that products like this can cause some nasty breakouts for people. Nevertheless, I still plan on drinking it. I've actually had it for the past 3 nights. I have seen no signs that I am allergic to it or that it will cause me to break out. This is good, because maybe my acne isn't affected by dairy as much as other people's. I should have known this earlier. When I stopped drinking 2 glasses of milk a day a while ago, I saw no noticeable changes to my acne. Also , I've spent my entire life drinking abundant amounts of milk, and I never really broke out until about a year ago. This leads me to believe that my acne is possibly just majorly hormonal and dairy has little to do with it. I will continue taking muscle milk unless I start seeing a sign that it's not good for me.
Staying very positive right now. I have much more confidence when going outdoors. Exercise is also amazing stuff to take things off your mind.
7 weeks later
First off I'll start by saying that I do realize I have been forgetting to post for such a long time. Being a college student, life is very busy and I am such a studious person, so I barely have time to do other things.
So I've been sticking to the same routine for almost 2 months now. Still using all three products prescribed to me: cephalexin pills twice a day, aczone cream in the morning, and retin-a at night. To be honest, I don't see much improvement. I would say that there is slight improvement. I'm pretty sure that the number of pimples I get that turn into those fat ones with white stuff inside have decreased. The amount of ACTIVE pimples have definitely slowed down. Still, my main problem, and the source of all my discomfort, are these dang scars that have barely faded. I read that retin-a is supposed to be vey good at getting rid of these red marks, but so far I've seen little fading. I have this batch of dark marks on my right cheek that has been there for 2 years. All the marks around that area seem to just stay there and never leave. It doesn't help that I constantly get pimples in that general area, so it slowly looks like an even bigger mess. Honestly, if I could get rid of this small chunk of skin on my face that's filled with dark marks and pimples, I'd be happy.
I have a derm. appointment in a couple weeks, I'll see what she says. To be honest, accutane is starting to become something I wanna go with.
44 Days After
Really weird. The skin between my eyebrows all of a sudden turned red, and I don't know why. Besides a small pimples that was already there, it doesn't seem or feel like new pimples are gonna come out. It's just bright red, like I scratched it, except the red isn't going away.
New pimple coming up on bottom left cheek. Two big fat red ones that have been on my right cheek (in the area where all the dark marks) for about a week, and a third one I can feel coming up literally next to them. Two on my jawline that are going away, and a tiny white-filled one between my eyebrows.
Also, I'm pretty much out of Acxzone, and won't be able to get some more until I return home, next week. Might just start using retin-a twice a day.
Time's passing, but this isn't healing as I expected it to.