It has admittedly taken me far too long to write this but it's because it's such an important subject to me that I want to do my story justice!
I guess I'll start by saying that I have had acne for 10 years. The years I should have been my most confident were ruined by the fact I had horrendous cystic acne. I've always been outgoing in social situations but inside, would always be deeply embarrassed about my face and paranoid that people were staring.
I tried countless long term courses of antibiotics (some of which made me really ill) as well as daily topical creams which burned and dried my skin out). I also experimented with cutting things out in my diet, excerising, drinking more water, switching up my skincare regimes and none of these helped lessen the blemishes on my face. After 10 years of this my doctor finally referred me to a dermatologist for a medicine called Roaccutane.
Because of it's intense side effects and the fact that you must not get pregnant whilst on the medication, it means monthly visits to the dermatologist for check ups, blood tests and pregnancy tests. I'm not going to lie, it's an intense drug!
I decided from the start that I wanted to document my journey on this medicine for a number of reasons:
1) So I could document and compare how my skin was changing on a daily basis, to either give myself or other acne sufferers some hope!
2) To get rid of some of the bad stigma surrounding this medicine and to show the reality of it.
3) To emphasise that it's okay to show your imperfections - no one is perfect and hopefully this will help some people going through the same thing.
I am now currently three months into my Roaccutane journey but I still have 5 more months to go so still lots of content to come.
Each month there will be 2 Roaccutane based videos on my YouTube channel. The first will be a recap of the side effects over the previous month with before and after pictures so you can see how my skin is improving. The 2nd video will be a 'daily skin vlog' where I have filmed my bare skin every day to show how it's changing daily.
You can watch month 1 & 2 here:
If you have watched, shared, commented or supported any of these videos, thank you so much. I really appreciate everyone's support and positivity. The feedback has been so overwhelming and I couldn't be more grateful to have such beautiful humans watching my journey.
I wanted to ask here if you guys would like written update posts from each month as well as the videos? I'm unsure of wether to write updates from the first two months as they've already been and gone but happy to write up monthly going forward - just let me know!
Lots of love,
Katie xx