Accutane.

Oh hey! I'm blogging and it's not April! How exciting!

I started taking Accutane a couple weeks ago. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's this drug that you take for five or six months and once you finish, you don't have to deal with bad acne again. If I just got a pimple here and there I wouldn't bother but I have what they call "nodular acne" which is disgusting and painful and causes scarring. I wish I would have done this in high school but it never happened.

The problem with Accutane is it has CRAZY side effects. For one thing, it causes terrible birth defects so I had to sign a contract saying that I wouldn't get pregnant while taking it. It's really now or never, since Nathan and I are going to start trying for kids in a year or so and this is kiiind of my last chance.

Another crappy side effect is dry skin. Dry everything, really. There aren't many drugs that permanently change your body, and Accutane is one of them. It reduces the amount of oil your body produces, and makes your oil glands smaller, etc. Ergo, dry skin. And not just dry skin. My lips are chapped SO bad, they've even cracked and bled a few times. The inside of my nose is so dry that I've been getting nosebleeds, which I've never had before. The outside of my nose and my chin are all scaly and gross. But the worst part, ladies and gentlemen, are the dry EYES. Oh yes, my eyes (the right one more than the left) are like the Sahara desert. On Thursday afternoon it was so bad that I had to come home from work early because I just could not see and the simple act of blinking was killing me.

Sigh. I've found ways to improve my problems. My dermatologist recommended Refresh Plus eye drops, and they are working really well. I'm slathering Vaseline on my lips and even applying it to the inside of my nose with a Q-tip. Good lotion for the rest of my face. But holy crap. I hope it doesn't stay this bad or get worse :(

I really shouldn't complain, modern medicine is awesome. I trust my doctor so if something goes seriously wrong he'll know what to do. I just wanted to vent a bit. If you see me around and my eyes are all red, I haven't been crying, I just have shriveled up eyeballs.

On the plus side, my laptop is in Salt Lake City! FedEx estimates that it will arrive on Wednesday, but is it too much to hope that it might be here by Tuesday? I"m excited!