Hey all.. I am on and off these boards for a long time now, its weird to see some of my old posts from years ago! Im 31 F and was recently diagnosed with PCOS. I've struggled with acne pretty much as long as I could remember. In high school I took a ton of antibiotics, and then it was different birth controls. When my insurance stopped after college and planned parenthood put me on Alesse, my face erupted. Once I got insurance with my new job, I underwent my first round of accutane at 23 and also switched back to Yasmin. Years later, I stopped the Yasmin, and slowly my acne started coming back, only with more cysts instead of the pustules I would get when I was younger. I did half a round of Accutane again (I was living in Europe) and it seemed to stave it off. Well now I'm 31 and its slowly gotten terrible over the last couple years. Stupidly, I never considered that I might permanently need to watch my hormones. Nine months ago, I asked my doctor if I could try spiro. She agreed, but it's been a rough journey. For one thing, the IB seemed to be terrible on it, and it has been never ending. While the accutane IBs does go away, cyclically it felt like nothing was improving for months. While my oil did go away after going up to 100-150 mg/day, I am still breaking out with inflammation, and further, I really have amassed a lot of scars in the last 9 months..

While I think Spiro does work to dry up oil, I am considering one final round of accutane to lessen the inflammation and then will stay on spiro and birth control pills afterward. Hopefully with my hormones regulated, I will have less of a chance of relapse (and if I do, then I will handle it without going on accutane again).

Just wanted to add my experience, since I have been back reading a lot on these forums!