Big Brother Continues

I sat in my car today outside my dermatologist's office and cried.

Yes, I'm pmsing. Yes, I haven't gotten much sleep lately. But still, I walked out of the office, sat down in my car, locked the door and cried.

I can't even put into words how frustrated and disappointed I am right now. I wanted to do some silly Mastercard commercial-esque quantitative list of what this medication has cost me in time, and energy, and money; how many countless hours spent waiting in the dermatologist's office, or how many ridiculous questions I've answered online just to pick up my prescription, but I don't have the energy.

After 8 months on Accutane I've still got acne. Or rather more appropriately, I've got acne again. 8 months of medication whose only purpose is to clear up my skin and I'm still breaking out. It seems pretty reasonable right now to feel like I've wasted my time. My skin is better, I will certainly admit that, but it's anything but clear.

According to my dermatologist some people just have 'stubborn' acne. Apparently Accutane is really only effective for 2/3 of people. There's that other 1/3 of us whose bad skin is just more resilient. Lovely. Leave it to me to have recursive acne. That's just want I want to hear after spending hundreds of dollars on this escapade.

I'm so frustrated and disappointed right now I don't even know... I don't blame the nurses at the dermatologist for being so optimistic at the beginning. It helped me feel like maybe there was something to be optimistic about. I mean it's their job to make people feel like everything's going to be ok. I mean they had a 2 out of three chance of being right, right? (I do really like the nurses at my dermatologist, much more than like my dermatologist actually. She's too awkwardly cold and clinical. It's a stark contrast from the bubbly nurses).

So now, yet again, I'm down to 'just one more month', which puts me in the middle of May. 9 (or is it only 8? I honestly don't remember) months after I started this whole ordeal. Either way it's been too long. I acquiesced to another month, despite my frustration, in part, I think, because I'm so afraid that as soon as I go off the medication my acne will come back in force, just as bad, if not worse, than it was before.

I can't be on it much longer though. My skin just won't heal anymore. cuts and scrapes take months to close over. And even then they do, they leave discolored splotches. It's funny to re-read what I'm writing now and compare it to how optimistic I was even just a month ago. I feel like all the advances I made have all fallen by the wayside.

Maybe the depression symptoms they've associated with Accutane were in that 1/3. Maybe it's not a side-effect of the medication, but a side-effect of it's ineffectiveness. Either way, I'll be glad to be done with it, whenever the end is.