The Pimply-Faced Youth of Today
Sometimes I am amazed as to how far I have progressed in my life in terms of maturity, intelligence, common sense, attitude, perspective, thought processes, emotions, and mannerisms. I’ve had a wide array of experiences that have shaped me to be who I am today. They have slapped me around, picked me up, slammed me down, and everything in between. More times than not, I’ve just simply been lucky — other times, only hard work has done the trick. All in all, I’ve been influenced a lot. If I think about it, I’m amazed at the journey.
If I really think about it, I’m amazed that I’ve come so far physically.
Yes, that is an actual picture of yours truly. The first is at the height of my dorkiness, a high school junior of 17 with more acne than skin on his face, glasses the size of the Arecibo radio telescope, a dippy haircut, and a shirt and tie for school pictures. Is it any wonder why I never got any dates and buried myself in schoolwork and music?
The acne was the worst of the entire experience and I shiver just to think about it now, 13 years later. If it wasn’t for a wonderful drug as a collage sophomore, I’d still have eruptions on my mug and quite possibly would still be single and living in a dark cave or similar. I’m not degrading those that have acne — rather, I have nothing but the utmost sympathy for them, because I was there once. It’s terrible. But it does have a marked impact against your social interactions, no matter how people like to act like they’re “good people” and don’t take notice of it.
It was about the time of this picture that I started seeing a dermatologist and taking rounds of antibiotics to try to combat the problem of my face. I did quite a few different types, going from mild to stronger and stronger, but nothing ever really took care of it. I showered twice a day, scrubbing vigorously, and would often wash my face independently in between. Each morning and night I would park myself in front of a mirror to pop the crop of zits that had grown in previous hours. With a pin in hand, I’d open up each one and squeeze it out, dabbing it afterwards. It was messy, it was gross, it hurt, and I hated it, but I had little choice unless I wanted to go around with a bunch of whiteheads blinking on my noggin like so many “DORK” signs.
There were days I simply wanted to rip my face off because it hurt so much and it frustrated me to no end. I was embarrassed; who wouldn’t be? But at the same time, what do you do? You just keep on plugging through life, hoping that the person talking to you would ignore the fact that you are hideously riddled with oozing sores. Girls? Ha! Right. “C’mere, babe, and kiss THIS!” Mind you, I was an immature nerd at the time, but even if I had a slight chance, she was probably afraid of infection.
Fortunately, after a bunch of futile rounds of drugs, the fates lined up (in other words, the family got good enough insurance) so that they could put me on a drug called Accutane (generic: isotretinoin). Simply put, it was the miracle worker of my skin.
The doctor explained it like this: As we all know, the oil glands are the ones that plug up when you have acne. Apparently some people (myself included) never develop the larger pores in the skin that comes with puberty. As such, mine were plugging up left and right because they were too small and dirt/bacteria irritated them easily. Accutane goes and stops your body from producing oil. You do this over a period of time by increasing the dosage until the oil stops completely. For some reason, once the oil has stopped flowing, the wells (pores) relax and open up, naturally making the hole larger. When you then go off Accutane, the oil production resumes, but with new, larger pores, they stop plugging up. Et voila — no acne.
The treatment wasn’t very fun at times. I had to have blood drawn every 3 months because the drug is hard on your liver. The treatment lasted about a year and a half, but the high dosage (4 pills three times a day) was during the January of 1998. As any Iowan can tell you, the air gets extremely dry during the winter, and this was no exception — now, imagine having zero oil for lubrication. MAJOR dry skin! I itched constantly and everything was cracking. A hot pot sat boiling water almost night and day to keep the humidity in the room up and I still hurt and flaked. To add to this, at the peak of my dosage, I got horribly depressed to the point that they backed it off by one pill per dose, as the drug has been hinted to cause clinical depression as a side effect.
My acne actually stopped about a month before I hit the peak dosage. Without any oil to plug up my pores, it simply went away. It was glorious — I couldn’t believe how much better my skin and face felt because of it. And when I stopped the drug — hallelujah! It didn’t come back! To this day I only get a zit on my face once every few months and zits elsewhere only when I get really dirty or sweaty; on the whole, it’s completely tolerable. My skin has never fully returned to its pre-Accutane oily state and during the winter months I can still get very dry and itchy if I don’t watch it.
I’d love to say that everyone and anyone who has acne can give this drug a whirl, but the fact it, it’s horribly expensive. The pills cost $6 each and I was consuming up to 12 a day at the top of my treatment (That’s $72/day for you math majors.) Thankfully, my mother’s health insurance only charged a small fee for each fill and the rest was covered by insurance; otherwise I wouldn’t have been so lucky.
A pretty face isn’t everything, of course. It has to be coupled with brains, personality, and morals, but it never hurts, right? I, for one, am forever grateful that I had the chance to get cleared up and looking better.
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