Big Brother might try to control my uterus, but he's impotent.
Which is probably good, cause I'm trying not to get pregnant.
I spent a month on birth control. As usual I ended up gaining weight, having mood swings, and generally not feeling good. I did manage to keep from getting preggers, though. But after a month I'd had enough. I managed to make it 9 years without popping out spawn, I think I can make it another 6 months doing what I've always done. So back off birth control and on Accutane.
(It's actually Claravis, made by Barr, not Roche, who manufactures the original Accutane.)
I can't complain too much about the actual medication. Generally I've felt fine, some muscle pain in the beginning, the obligatory dry skin and cracking lips, but in general, nothing major. The depression that scared me the most before going on this medication has been nowhere to be found. In fact I'm the happiest I've been in a long time. It seems I got all worked up about the side-effects for nothing.
That's not to say the side effects are negligible. I cannot begin to describe how dry my lips are. It's always fun to go to work in the morning looking like someone punched you in the lip- swelling, bleeding and all. There is not enough Chapstick or Vaseline in the world to keep my lips hydrated. They're dry from the inside out.
Like my lips, my skin is dry, close to unbearably so at times. I expect it'll only get worse as the weather gets colder and dryer. The doctor prescribed some weird Swedish foam moisturizer for my face and a steroid cream for my lips. 150 dollars later neither seems to be doing much. Maybe I'm just not noticing it.
So far the Accutane seems to be doing it's job- which in the beginning is making my skin worse. I keep telling myself that in 5 months I'll never have to worry about acne again. There's spots of light at the end of the tunnel though. I can see it getting better, just not in the spots that have gotten tremendously worse.
The most interesting thing that the Accutane has done is changed my relationship to my own self-image. Right now my skin is too bad to hide behind make-up, it has a mind of it's own- one day it's fine the next it's a war zone. I can't cover it up-make- it tends to hurt and certainly doesn't help my skin.
I can't pretend it's not there. I can't put my life on hold for months until my skin clears up. So what that all means is that I can't worry about it. I can't control it, or rather I'm in the process of controlling it. But I'm ok with it. My skin is my skin, and I'm comfortable in it.
Who knew it would take my skin getting worse for me to stop caring what people thought of it?
