I'm six weeks into my Accutane treatment. My first month I had a 45% improvement from my starting point. The second month seems about the same, but we'll see in the next two weeks. I've had quite a few side effects. Dry lips being the worst. I'm only recently starting to experience extensive dry skin, leaving me with tiny red rashes much like eczema. I've had back pain, some joint pain, and a few headaches.

The worst side effect has been the effect it had on my blood sugars...forcing me to raise my Lantus and lower my insulin to carb ratios due to intense insulin resistance. Luckily, I've managed to get that into much better control. And I'm looking forward to it resolving once I'm done with this treatment.

Mostly, I'm ready to see even more improvement. I've spent the last year and a few months with severe acne that left my spirit completely void. And I spent the last three years dealing with acne in general. These breakouts have been worse because acne was never something that I dealt with as a teenager. I watched my brothers struggle with it, even going on Accutane themselves. But I lucked out. At least, until I hit college.

Now that I see improvement, I am slowly remembering what it's like to actually know what my skin looks like. I'm certainly still getting breakouts. I have two pretty bad spots right now, one with a cyst and another of a multitude of tiny pustules. But my forehead is almost entirely clear, my chin has seen extensive improvement, and my cheeks go back and forth between breakouts and clear.

There's tons of pigmentation leftover from the past year's assault on my face, which leaves me fairly disgruntled on a daily basis. But even that isn't getting me down the way that it used to. Because between those spots, I actually see skin. And I can see those spots lightening day by day and week by week (with the use of Mederma and Clinique's Even Better Skin Tone Corrector to help).

I'm just hopeful that the next two weeks will clear what's there and I'll get fewer and fewer breakouts as time continues on. I've heard that by month three, things really start to progress. And with the amount of improvement that I've already seen, I can't imagine what month three will be like for me. I'm ready to go out into the world without makeup or at least as much makeup. I'm ready to spend the night at friend's houses and actually wash my face. I'm ready to spend the summer at the lake and not stress about my "mask" slipping off.

No one can imagine what this has been like. Unless you've been there. It's been the biggest struggle that I've ever dealt with. My self esteem took the biggest beating that I could possibly imagine. And it still is, every day that I have to put makeup on just to feel normal. And every day that the makeup doesn't work (which is more common now because of the dry skin).

I wish that I could go back in time and change it. I wish that I could start Accutane and stop the progesterone (which I did finally back in September) much sooner. I wish that I could take it all back.

But it's a struggle that I've been through and that I'm going through. It's a struggle that I'm surviving. A struggle that I can't wait to put behind me, just to say that I did it. I fought and I won. I'm ready for that.