Hello everyone! I'm on a journey to gain back the clear skin I once had. I just started the tretinoin treatment and I wanted to record my experience as I go along and share it on this community to help anyone that has any concerns or is curious of what they'll be going through with the particular treatment. I would like to do weekly updates of my skin, the products used and my emotion state because I've became deeply depressed for the past 3 months and I'm hoping by joining acne.org I will find some peers who will be going through the same.

For more pictures and details visit my blog [removed]

Pre-Tretinoin

This should have came with a warning lol, sorry my nose and chin was all up in your screen. But it was pretty scary, my nose was covered in 3 huge cysts that popped up over night. It was so painful, I immediately went to see a derm and was prescribed a 10-days worth of Cephalexin (antibiotics) and Clindamycin (a topical antibiotics), it calmed my cysts down right away but it was temporarily. New cysts formed on my forehead (left picture) and tretinoin was the goal for long term solution.

Week 1

The scarring from all the forehead cysts were still there because I got a cortisone shot in all three of them since I had to attend a big event and no way I was going with those growing on my forehead! New ones came up near my eyebrows and my upper lips, but it wasn't as bad as the beginning.

Week 2

These pictures are taking by the end of week 2, nothing new seem to have popped up. There's no active cysts, just the previous ones from the week before. It's quite suprising how I've not broken out badly, I expected to be breaking out from week 2 to 3, hmmm. Well, I'll find out after week 3.

Week 3

Nothing changed much by the end of week 3, I've expected the purging stage to have fully blown up by now. But nope! This makes me very doubtful about the medication even though I know it will work, but the suspense of waiting for the purging stage to hit is awfully painful haha. I hope I'm those lucky ones whom doesn't suffer from the terrible purging stage because so far my skin is clear (don't know for how long)! The side effects are still there, it was especially bad when I was in the sun this one day. I came home with a burning face and even a light touch burns and stings so bad, but it was fine the next day.