u/ClearBlue_Grace

Hey guys, fellow tret user here. I want to start off by saying I have had the most stressful year of my entire life and it led to my skin breaking out initially due to stress hormones (losing a loved one) while also rationing my spironolactone (lost my insurance for five months, yay!). I have always had cystic acne since puberty, but spironolactone was keeping me 95% clear since I was probably 17-18 until now.

I have been back on my 200mg spironolactone dose along with topical clindamycin and 0.025% tretinoin for exactly three weeks. I went straight into using tret every third night, and have been taking to it really well in terms of irritation and dryness. I have four active cysts right now, but the skin around them is kind of glowing, and the redness from my breakouts earlier this year are already fading. I am surprised by how quickly I am breaking out, but also how fast they are surfacing and healing. I typically have cysts that never seem to surface and just swell and hurt like a mf until one day they decide to disappear and leave me with the aftermath for months afterward.

I see a lot of progress photos of people with relatively mild surface level acne, but has anyone here had success with severe nodular or cystic acne? When did you really begin to clear? I just need to talk to people who know what I am going through. I know I am at the beginning of my treatment but my god is it hard. I have a giant cyst under my goddamn nose. I feel like an ugly goblin.

My routine is simple. I use neutrogena oil free face wash followed by clindamycin lotion in the morning and dermasil acne prone sunscreen. At night I use my face wash and Neutrogena sensitive skin moisturizer. I have been using the sandwich method while applying my tretinoin. I have also been using hydrocolloid patches which have been helping with healing. I have started icing my face/breakouts earlier this week and have noticed a reduction in my inflammation.

Hey guys! I am 27 and casually looking into either going to school next year or just making a career change. I currently work at a retail bakery and really enjoy the work I do, but feel somewhat drawn to being a receptionist. I know there are so many different places that hire receptionists. Warehouses, spas, hospitals, therapy clinics, salons, hotels. I would love to hear from you all about your experiences. What kind of setting do you work in now? What is your stress level like? And what kind of advice would you have for someone potentially getting into the field?

I will say, I worked as a hotel housekeeper and the head receptionist had to call the cops three times in the first month I was there. I know for a fact hotels are out of the question for me lol.

I got a $1 raise at my job and I called the number that was provided in my letter when I got accepted for medical assistance earlier this year to update my income. I just got an income discrepancy letter claiming I never updated anything when I absolutely did. I have to wait to call until monday but has this happened to anyone else? I am worried if I try to update my income information it won't go through again and I will lose the health insurance I feel like I just got. I am so confused if I am supposed to be reporting somewhere else entirely besides my county office?? I am constantly confused by health insurance, even state insurance.

I will say I had a family member pass earlier this year and I took a ton of time off of work. Can you get penalized for taking time off and it impacting your income?

Thanks to this sub, I decided to try Global Beauty Care rice water toner and I love it. I love how soft it makes my skin. I work at a bakery and wash my hands 50 times a day, and the rice toner has made my hands so nice and soft. I want to try more DT skincare, but am always so nervous to add new things to my routine. So I am curious to know, if you had to pick your ultimate faborite skincare product from DT which one would it be?

Hey guys I have been on a hell of a journey with my cystic acne. I have been on spironolactone for probably eight years now and it is the only thing that has ever helped my hormonal acne. I was told by two dermatologists that my cystic acne was some of the most severe they had ever seen! Thankfully I have been probably 95% clear since around four months into taking spiro.

Earlier this year though, a family member of mine passed away and the experience was very unexpected and traumatizing for everyone. I definitely missed some spironolactone doses here and there in the first month of grieving, but tried my best to stick to it.

Despite trying to keep to my routine, my skin began to explode with cystic acne. It was so severe, it just added to the pain and devastation of the entire situation. It has been two months since, and my skin is still breaking out in cysts along my chin, though not as severely. I finally was able to see a dermatologist and ask her if grief could really override the effects of spironolactone and she said it absolutely can. I was prescribed tretinoin and topical clindamycin, and we are going to do derma needling sessions when my skin heals. I am only one week into my new routine and so ready to be done with these cysts.

I was so worried spironolactone suddenly stopped working for no reason, but apparently grief messes with your hormones so much it does not matter if you are still taking spironolactone. I guess I was kind of wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience on spiro? Every time I try to ask anything in the spironolactone subreddit I get no responses, so I thought I would bring the conversation here.

Hey guys I have been lurking around here trying to find more info. Apparently some of us experience breakouts when the manufacturer of our spironolactone is changed? I have had the best skin of my life for six years and as soon as I stared planning my wedding for next year my skin started to freak out. I looked closer at my newest spironolactone bottle and realized it says "zydu"? I have never seen that before. I can't find a lot of information about different spironolactone manufacturers online, but how many are there and why is this the first one that has ever made me break out like a hormonal 13 year old??

Thankfully I see a dermatologist on monday, but is it widely agreed that a change of manufacturer can cause breakouts or will I just sound crazy by claiming my latest prescription is somehow different than before?

Also I would like to know if anyone here takes birth control on top of spironolactone. I am considering it if a change in manufacturer does not help.

It's not even about how much money I take home overall, just the mere fact that today I realized my employer thinks I deserve to work over an hour of my goddamn life to afford one bag of chicken nuggets. When I started working here over a year ago I felt okay about my hourly, but now a year later I am actively making far less money than before and I notice it every single day. The price of everything around me is constantly going up. I've watched cans of fucking chilli go from $1.75 to damn near three dollars per can. I saw canned chicken and dumplings on "sale", 2 for $8, how is that a deal??? Even trying to stick to frozen and canned vegetables does not help when one package of zucchini costs five dollars and thats only how much it costs right now. Who knows what it'll be next week.

My partner and I do not qualify for food stamps. I feel like a failure of a human being. At this point it would probably be more beneficial to my family to quit working entirely and finally be able to qualify for food stamps.

Worst part is I really enjoy my job. As far as the work goes it is the best job I have ever had. I thought this was going to be the job that got me through school, but now I worry I literally can't afford to keep working here.

Hey everyone. My girlfriend of three years proposed to me on Saturday! I am so excited to marry my best friend and take her last name, but I am feeling kind of anxious about my family situation on my side when it comes to the wedding. I do not want to go into details, but we basically had a messy falling out around four years ago and have not spoken since. I have moved on and embraced my partners family and they have embraced me too.

When we got engaged I had a whopping four people to tell on my side and one of them is a close friend. I've been thinking more about the actual wedding day and realizing I might have basically no one. My mom is in intestinal failure and her kidneys are not well, though I know she wants to be there. My aunt is notoriously flakey, even when it comes to important events. My sister lives an hour away and hardly talks to me, though I know life is busy. My friend will most definitely be there though. I technically have a great grandmother who lives across the country but the chances of her being able to travel and attend is basically zero.

I'm just trying to be realistic about this wedding so I do not get my hopes up for nothing. I will have no bridesmaids, and if my sister declines to be my maid of honor I won't have that either. I have no father to walk me down the isle and a mom who will struggle immensely to be present at an event heavily involving food. I love my partners family but I worry my lack of family and friends will be emphasized at the wedding and her extended family might have questions about it. I was already working through my thoughts and feelings on my family in therapy before the engagement, but they are still very complicated and now I have to face it in a way I never considered.

Can anyone here share their wedding experience with very little family involvement? Did it turn out okay for you? Or was it as painful as I am imaging it will be?

Undiagnosed ocd and homeschooling do not mesh well. I became afraid of leaving the house within a few months, I spent everyday alone focusing on my ocd rituals and obsessions instead of school. I had no friends anymore, no school events to look forward to, no extra curricular activities, no hobbies, just alone and isolated for years. I didn't go to prom. I cannot relate to any aspect of the typical american high school experience. I wasn't even taught how to fucking drive.

Looking back, I very obviously needed mental health help and what did I get instead? Isolation. I was able to completely block out the outside world and indulge in all my obsessions and never face any of my fears. Why the fuck didn't my mom want me to succeed? Why was she okay with isolating me after I tried to off myself at 13? If my kid sliced up both of their arms past the elbow I would rush them to a fucking hospital, not get angry at them and pull them out of school.

Whenever I asked to try therapy or meds she would warn me that having a mental health diagnosis in my medical chart would make doctors not take me seriously. Mom, you're the one not taking me seriously right now! I don't know why it's taken this long for me to finally be mad about it. I am 27 now and I am fucking pissed. I feel like a significant chunk of my life was stolen from me and it's appalling there is so little oversight when it comes to homeschooling of any kind. No one was able to realize I was struggling. I had no guidance councilor to go to. I felt like I had no one. I saw no future for myself for years. Despite struggling with the class material it was like no one noticed. Not one of my teachers reached out to me.

Why the hell do you as a parent not want to help your kid learn how to cope and manage their very apparent illness? Or learn how to drive? Or have literally any life skills at all?? Or end up actually getting their hs diploma??? Yeah. She pulled me out of high school anyway, telling me I'd just get my ged and it would be fine. We never got my ged. I just entered the working world not knowing how to drive, basically having the education of a 14 year old, having basically no social experience and I was still completely undiagnosed. I have felt so much shame about my own life. It literally did not even occur to me how badly my mom fucked up until this past year.

Is there anyone else here who grew up with severe mental health issues that were made even worse by homeschooling? I look back on my life and am just baffled by what I went through.