Hello friends! I'm starting to pick up some speed and finally get some distance behind me with this awful acne. It's actually been more than 2 month since I started Accutane and while I'll be sharing more photos of my skins progress soon,  I wanted to show what it looked like at month 2. So here I am in some of the most unflattering of photos. To be honest I'm a bit embarrassed and have deeply considered re-shooting these, even editing them! I think I said that last month too but it is just as true this month. As my skin is starting to clear up I'm starting to see what my skin actually looks like underneath all these bumps and scabs. I've never seen my skin fully acne free and despite my optimistic nature I still remain skeptical that I will ever be rid of this burden.

Oh look I have freckles! Lots of them, with a bit of skin discoloration mixed in, thanks acne scaring and hormones. I'd love to keep my freckles i think they're cute but I know that I have a lot of scars to remove and I know that my journey to better skin won't be over after Accutane. I've already decided that I will go in after the required 6 month waiting period and get laser work done to remove any dimples and deep scaring.



But anyhoo back to my updates. I really struggled through this month. My headaches were worse than ever and most days I just didn't have the motivation to do a lot of moving. I had held hope that lowering my dose to 30mg once a day would eliminate my problems but it didn't, not completely anyways. Of course I did take double doses when ever I could. What ultimately ended up helping was just not taking my medication on days when I felt lousy and then resuming it again the next day. I did this on and off the whole month long. Doubling up on good days, half doses on so so days, and nothing at all on days I was nearly in tears with terrible migraines. I also discovered that my period does play a part in my migraines even though I don't usually have major menstrual cycles. Since then I've also had my dosage lowered. I take 20mg twice a day. Which is good cause I really need to get caught up. I don't want to be on this medication for a whole year! But when I do have a bad day taking 20mg is better than taking 30mg. I just hope this lower dose doesn't affect the final outcome when I'm off this medication.

Despite the ups and downs I'm still working through, I am learning a pattern and what seems to work for my body. I've been trying to push double doses when ever I can as I'm currently 26 days behind my 6 month mark. As long as I finish before summer I'll be a happy gal!

As for the other Accutane side affects, my eyes are terribly dry and red. I've been using Blink Tears and while gel eye drops are fantastic for severely dry eyes it only mildly helps keep the dryness at bay. Colorado's dry winters probably aren't helping me even though our home does have a built in humidifier. I may need to break down and buy a small one for my room too. There's nothing like waking up in the morning with the feeling like someone replaced your eyes with raisins! My under eye area is paper thin as is the rest of my skin. I can't tell you how much that bothers me. It's like I've aged 15yrs and I can only pray that this is all revived once I'm finished with this. My doctor reassures me that it will but it's still no picnic! Gretta jumped on my the other day, her nail cut my hand pretty bad, since then I've been walking around like I'm glass! LOL!

 

I still remain positive despite how frustrating this medication can be. It's also been nice cutting down my makeup time! Yea! Less to cover and conceal! If you have any questions about Accutane don't hesitate to ask! I'll share more about my skin care next time.

Take Care & Enjoy,
Heather


P.S. For the record, I just woke up. Haha I probably could look a bit more bright eyed but it was a late starting day and I wanted to make sure photos were taken. Also to view better detail click on each photo. Note: Firefox and blogger seems to be acting rather awful lately and are fuzing photos worse than other browsers. I think Chrome might be my new favorite browser. My hubby keeps swearing they are better and since he's a total computer nerd he's probably right. I just don't like change lol!