Cursed

As a preteen, I met one of my greatest foes: zits. I have been plagued by those pesky red bumps ever since. I have finally figured out how to manage my skin as an adult, but it has been a very long road. I have been on just about every cream, pill, skin system, etc. The road to good skin has been a long one, rife with crappy products and bad experiences.

When my skin had gotten particularly bad in middle school, my mom decided it was time to go to the dermatologist. My nice doctor put me on everything from tetracycline to various nasty-smelling creams I put on at bedtime. After little to no good results, he finally put me on the grandaddy of all zit-zappers: Accutane. I recall really having to push him to let me go on it....but all of the pleading, mandatory blood tests, and peeling skin was completely worth it. Within about a month, people started complementing me on how nice my skin looked. More importantly, I could look into a mirror and feel good about what I saw. I was on Accutane for 6 months, but the effects lasted for years. I would happily have gone through it all again had I felt that my skin needed that strong of a medicine again. thankfully, it has not gotten to the point.

But I remember how frustrating it was to have bad skin, how much it affected my self-esteem. In my work, I see what kind of treatments teenagers now are using to correct their skin. It is basically all of the same stuff I used. I notice that their skin still is not clear. It makes me wonder about the various pills and creams that dermatologists are putting these kids on. From my experience, I know that most of this stuff just does not work. It didn't work for me, and it is obviously not working for these kids I see on a regular basis. I have a friend who has been on tetracycline for a month and has seen no improvement whatsoever....boy, do I remember those days!

It appears that there is nothing new on the market to treat acne medically, which is shame. Have these doctors not noticed that alot of the medicines they prescribe are not working? Yet they keep sending these poor kids home with a prescription for a stinky, expensive cram that is basically a waste of money. ....or some other solution that "research" dictates could treat acne. I understand that there is no cure for acne (which sounds like a load of crap in this day and age). Which is exactly why researchers should get back into the lab and work harder to find a solution to a problem that billions of people have on a regular basis. Dermatologists are also at fault for continually handing out these medicines and not attempting to be more creative in skincare solutions. It is obvious that some of these doctors care very little about the result...I would even go so far as to call them quacks. Don't tell me that some of these women or men didn't suffer from bad skin as teenagers....don't tell me they didn't go through exactly what their patients are going through now. They could at least have a little sympathy and honesty when dealing with a young person's fragile self-esteem.