Looking back, my only regret is that I waited so long. I tried. I really tried. I patiently waited for my skin to clear up. Spent untold dollars on dermatologists and followed their instructions. Diligently wiped antibiotic lotions over my face and took oral antibiotics for years. I faithfully used Retin-A, and slathered on sulfur masks. I used facial masks to try and
soak up oil during the day. For most of that time my skin did improve, but it never really stopped breaking out and I still had to put up with oily, incessantly greasy-looking skin. Besides, despite the improvement I saw from using antibiotics and the other treatments, I didn’t want to stay on them forever. Adapting to the antibiotics was a risk I wasn’t willing to continue taking. Who knew how much longer I would continue breaking out? It had been going on since I was 11, and by then I was 38.
I had known about Accutane for a long time. I knew it had some pretty serious, even dangerous, side effects, and that most dermatologists didn’t prescribe it very often, and then only for the most serious cases. My acne and oily skin were serious to me, but not as bad as the pictures I had seen of the cystic acne cases that responded brilliantly to treatment with Accutane. Then, in 1990, a woman I worked with and two of her friends started taking Accutane. They not only lived through it, their skin looked flawless! More than flawless— radiant (at least in comparison to what it looked like before).
“Considered the biggest breakthrough in acne drug treatment over the last 20 years, Accutane is the only drug that has the potential to clear severe acne permanently after one course of treatment” (Sources: FDA Consumer magazine, March-April 2001; and www. fda. gov). It also has the most serious side effects and risks of any other cosmetic prescription treatment for acne.