Roaccutane | Ending the 10 year battle against acne

At the ripe age of 24, I developed the worst acne of my life. You’ve read how I suffered with eczema, and how Epaderm and antibiotics kept it all under control, but towards the end of my time in the US it all just became too much. I visited my doctor to see if we could do anything to get it back under control. She looked back at my history and saw that I had been suffering with acne on and off for over 10 years.

Over the last 10 years my doctor had prescribed me topical treatments including Zineryt, Panoxyl, all the major acne fighting contraceptive pills and two variations of antibiotics. Aside from this I had tried Proactiv, Kheil’s, Clinique and various cheaper and expensive brands. Only the combination of antibiotics and Epaderm kept my acne under control for a short period of time.

It didn’t matter if I was surrounded by friends, strangers or family, my skin caused me pain, both physically and emotionally. There are people out there with much worse skin than me who embrace it, and I absolutely applaud those that do. But by this point, I had had enough and was willing to try anything and pay the price too.

My doctor decided that it was time to go ahead with Roaccutane (or Accutane) treatment.

Now I won’t go into the ins and outs of what Roaccutane does – there is a great blog here from Get The Gloss where they actually interview a doctor about this in greater detail and I certainly do not have the qualifications do be doing that.

What I do want to talk about is my experience with Roaccutane.

I was first prescribed Roaccutane at the beginning of November at a 60mg dose per day. This is a high dose to start with, most of the people I had spoken to about the treatment started somewhere around 20mg. The dermatologist keeps a very close eye on you through the whole process and will alter the dose from month to month depending on how you are coping with it. In my case, he has kept it the same for 3 months.

Below are some progression pictures from the day I started roaccuatne to the end of my third month.

Now for the negatives… I want to tell you it’s a miracle and it has been super easy, but the reality is, Roaccutane is hard-core.

One of the biggest side effects is the dryness. My lips are constantly chapping; my arms and hands are also unusually dry. I am also experiencing very VERY minor nose bleeds when I blow my nose. An upside of the dryness is that my hair doesn’t seem to get greasy as easily, I don’t need to wash it every single day (BONUS).

In the first week or two, I had some sensitivity to light, but this was mostly artificial lighting that caused me problems, and it has since subsided.

My feeling towards the treatment so far has been that; because I have suffered with acne for a long period, suffering slight side effects for up to 6 months is a small price to pay to be comfortable in my own skin.

I still have another 3 months left taking roaccutane and plan to post again about the products I used to keep the side effects at bay.

Check out some other Roaccutane stories:

More Roaccutane blogs/stories :

• The Daily Mail - Beauty blogger who battled severe acne for 10 years reveals how she transformed her skin in an emotional video diary

• Lydia Elise Millen – The Naked Truth – A Year Since Roaccutane

• Orlagh Claire – My Acne Story: How Roaccutane Changed My Life

**Word of advice: you cannot get Roaccutance/Accutane prescribed by a GP, you must be referred to a dermatologist. I would recommend you go private if you can, the NHS took 3 months to acknowledge my need, 5 months later, still no appointment.**