A Blemish In My Life - A Memoir Two-weeks before my senior prom I was in the hospital dying. Neither the doctors nor I knew from what. Over the past year, my body was undergoing one problem after the other. My delicate fingers were swollen with red, tender knuckles. My thin legs were highly sensitive to touch and had dark green bruises running up and down them. Pink bumpy rashes covered my pale arms and legs and also circled my eyes. I was always tired, because I had a 102 degree fever that had been persisting for five-months. I didn�t know what it felt like to be healthy anymore as I lay in my hospital bed with uncomfortable oxygen tubes shoved up my nostrils. How did things get this far? When I entered my freshman year in high school I was finally beginning to grow out of my awkward stage. My hair had grown over the summer making my once thick untamable locks into long flowing curls down my back. I had a cute, petite body with a small waist and good-sized breasts. My skin was tan and flawless. The guys were finally noticing me. But, just as good things were happening to my body from puberty, it wasn�t too long before bad things started happening from puberty. Namely, zits. I didn�t just have a pimple here or there, I started getting really bad acne on my face as well as my back and shoulders. My mom told me it would clear up when I got into my twenties, but even now at twenty-one my skin isn�t all that great. My mom was always really supportive about my acne problem; she had the same problem when she was young. She spent a great deal of time and money finding all kinds of promising creams and soaps for me. The expensive brands like Neutrogena were the ones that promised the best results in their commercials, but I soon found they were no different then the cheap ones like Suave. My dad was really inconsiderate when it came to my skin problem. What�s that rash all over your face, he would say. Are you allergic to something? Don�t you keep your face clean? Of course I kept it clean. I scrubbed my face three times a day until it was dry, and I could barely crack a smile. When it wasn�t raw from cleaning it, I had on make-up and tons of it, all of it hypoallergenic and oil-free, of course. My obsession with my skin only grew by having a monthly subscription to Teen Magazine. Page after page I looked enviously at girls my age with flawless and unblemished skin. I took note on more skincare tips from the magazines than I did for any of my classes. Those magazines were sacred to me. Not only did I read them once, but I saved all of them and read them a second or third time. There was always that off chance that I missed some pertinent information. Eventually, Oxy Pads and Clearasil weren�t cutting it for me. And, those so-called sure-fire zit-zapper tips from Teen were proving to be useless, and besides it was costing my mom a fortune to purchase all the stuff they recommended. I couldn�t just give up though. My case was serious. I needed to seek professional help. So, my mom got me an appointment with a Dermatologist at Kaiser. The only problem was that I had to come to the appointment with a fresh, clean face. What a horror! That would require me leaving the house without my make-up on. What if I saw someone I knew? I had to chance it; I was desperate to get help. The doctor wasn�t hesitant at all to tell me that I needed medicine. He took one look and wrote me a prescription for pills, called Tetracycline, liquid stuff called Clindamycin, and a cream called Retin-A. He warned me that initially my acne would get worse but to stick with medicine. That worried me, but I promised him that I would be sure to follow the directions exactly. I never did see that doctor again, but I kept the prescription for three years. I just kept getting one refill after another. If the refill ran out I just had to make an appointment with any random Dermatologist at Kaiser, and he or she would fill out a new one, no questions asked. After awhile, my body began to build up a tolerance for the medication. I needed stronger medicine and I needed it soon. So, I made another appointment at Kaiser, and the doctor kindly prescribed me a much stronger antibiotic called Minocycline. He guaranteed me that these pills were as strong as it gets. They were at the top of the line for Tetracyclines. I have to confess that I didn�t always follow my orders exactly. There were times when I would pop five pills a day opposed to the set three. I was also only supposed to use the topical medicine at bedtime, and instead I would apply it at night and during the day underneath my make-up. More isn�t always better, especially with medicine, but I believed that if I did all of this extra stuff it would speed up the whole process. I took the medicine religiously. I wouldn�t dare skip a day. If the prescriptions were running low, I became frantic but all I had to do was call in my refill and two days later I�d have a fresh supply. Even though I was doing all of this, and the doctor assured me that it would all help, it wasn�t helping. Of course my skin looked better than it did before but it wasn�t that great. The pimples were going away quicker, but as soon as I was starting to look better, I would break out all over again. It was never the medication�s fault; I would constantly make-up excuses for it. I was either breaking out because of my period, or because of the sudden weather change. Or, I was getting too sweaty in P.E., and greasy food was making my skin oily. I was too dependent on the drugs by then, how could I stop? Or, what could stop me? When my senior year came I started getting sick. I was experiencing joint aches all over, and I had fevers. I started taking Aspirin to relieve my pain and to calm down my fevers. Things as simple as combing my hair or bending to pick something up became too painful. I had the chills at night and hot flashes at day. In the middle of the night I woke up from chattering my teeth so hard from the chills, and my joints ached with such severity that I literally scramed into my pillow from pain. I thought maybe at least rage would warm me. I became like an old person, slow and frail with no strength. I was nowhere near being like the girls in Teen that I dreamed of being like. In the halls at school, I could hardly keep up with the rest of the kids. Every step was painful. No one knew, because I hid my pain well by OD'ing on Aspirin throughout the day. Besides, I had always been a weakling. It must have looked odd when I couldn�t even open a simple Crystal Geyser Bottle, when I couldn�t raise my arm too high for too long in classes, or when I couldn�t stay awake in classes. It especially must have looked weird when I was always freezing, even on a warm day or in a heated room. I was positive I was dying. How could I tell my parents? What was I dying of? I didn�t even want to know. I was too scared. Many thoughts ran wildly through my head. I didn�t have time to be ill. I was in my senior year of high school. I just got a brand new job. I had a boyfriend. Wait, what if he made me sick? What if he gave me AIDS? Are these the symptoms of AIDS? Or is it Hepatitis? Cancer? Physically I was falling apart, and mentally I was deteriorating as well. I finally decided to ask my mom for help. I lay in my bed wrapped in blankets, and she sat by my side. I told her that I might have AIDS. This of course shocked her, but she assured me that I wasn�t dying of AIDS, and promised me she would take me to Kaiser the next day. Everything was going to be better. The doctor at Urgent Care was highly skeptical of my complaints and insisted I had the common cold. I�ve had a cold for nearly three years? Oh, that explains it all. How foolish of me. I immediately ran out of the room crying and threw myself in my mom�s arms. After she calmed me down, she went and found the doctor. How dare you treat my daughter like that, she screamed. She�s sick! Can�t you see, you blind bat! When she came back she grabbed my hand and took me to Pediatrics for young adults and demanded that they see me. The only doctor on shift came in the waiting room and seeing the condition I was in, he immediately brought me in a room to examine me. He was much more attentive and seemed to genuinely care about what was happening to me. He became obsessed with it, bringing all sorts of medical books in the room and looking up every single symptom I had. He administered many different tests. Vials of blood were sucked out of me until my arms were so bruised and my veins were so weak that they had to use needles meant for babies to draw my blood. I didn�t care; I just supplied the blood, and vials of it at that. I do know that he did the HIV test that I had insisted on. Every test came back negative though. It soon got to the point where I had to stay at the hospital and stay on oxygen, because my breathing had become so shallow. The doctor finally decided to refer my case to a more experienced doctor, and he admitted his efforts might be quite limited since he was only a Pediatric doctor. He sent me to a Rheumatologist, who specializes in joints and muscles. That doctor came to the conclusion that I probably had Lupus, an inflammatory disease of the skin, muscle, and joints. All of my symptoms matched up with Lupus�s. The only thing was that when I was tested for it, my results were negative. He said it was possible but not something that he had ever come across. He went ahead and put me on the medication for Lupus. I had to take more pills: Prednisone and Plaquinal. The medicine was working for me, and I was close to feeling normal again. But, my acne was starting to get worse. It had to be because of the new medicine, I thought. My mom had this wonderful book on prescription drugs, so I looked them up, and sure enough, Prednisone was causing the problem. There was only one thing I could do. Stop taking the Prednisone of course. I couldn�t� aggravate my skin anymore than it was. I tried not taking the Prednisone for a while, but it was impossible. All of my aches and pains came right back. So, I started taking it again and just up-ed the dosage of the Minocycline. It wouldn�t hurt too much to take a little more. Hopefully, it would counter the effects of the Prednisone. I don�t know why. Maybe because I was really bored one day or maybe because it was fate, I started looking up all of the medicines I was taking in my mom�s book. I should know what the hell I�d been digesting for the past three years. Right in the section for Minocycline it read, �Unlikely or rarely possible: Causes drug-induced Lupus like symptoms.� I couldn�t believe what I was reading. It was too good to be true. That meant I really didn�t have Lupus. I wouldn�t have to take Predinsone anymore. Just one problem, I couldn�t take the Minocycline either, which meant more zits. I showed the Rheumatologist my information, and I was met with skepticism again. He told me that the chances of that being my case were exactly what the book read, �unlikely� and �rare.� I wasn�t going to listen to him. I never went back to see him again. I also never swallowed another Minocycline Pill or Prednisone Pill again. A week later, I was fine. It all just went away: the pain, the bruises, the chills, and the fever. I still had the acne. Even though I had come to near death, I still wanted to have clear skin. I had to wait awhile before Kaiser would finally allow me to take Accutane, a very strong dosage of Vitamin A that is taken for five months. When I did take it, I cleared up a lot but not completely. Today, my skin is still not what I would like it to be, so I take another kind of antibiotic on a daily basis. It is in no way related to the Tetracycline family. Believe me, I�ve fully researched it. The most that can happen is diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and drug-induced viral hepatitis symptoms. No big deal. So, how did I let things get that far? How did I come that close to death just because of a skin problem? Simply, because it was that important to me. It was important that I look good. It was important that I not look like some freakish girl with a bad case of acne. People risk their lives for beauty all the time, like getting breast enlargements, nose jobs, liposuction, or even something as simple as going to tanning booths. Insecurities can make you do some crazy things, and I learned that the very hard way. I�m never too sure at whom to be angry with about this whole incident. I could be angry with myself; because even after all I�ve been through I�m still taking antibiotics knowing that it�s harmful. I guess I didn�t learn my lesson. I could be upset with Kaiser, because the doctors that treated me never thought to check out the medicine I had been taking to see if it was the cause. Instead they wrongly diagnosed me, and they put me on even more medication. I could be angry with Teen Magazine for subjecting me to pretty fresh-faced models that I so terribly wanted to resemble. I could be angry with my dad for being so ignorant about my �rash� problem and, therefore, making me even more insecure about my self. I could also be angry with my mom for supporting my obsession with my skin by purchasing all those creams and soaps that Teen insisted on using. But in spite of everything, I can�t be angry now; at least I�m alive.
Copyright © 2000 Deb Meyer |