Worst acne experience? (Probably TMI)

In My Humble Opinion
21

I got all vain and stuff - my husband wanted to take pictures but I refused. But yeah, they do take time to heal.

I was going to say “Gross out a NURSE??? WAIT a minute --!” but then I remembered I made a medical student puke so I’ll just shut up about that.

Um… what did your mom find disturbing? Surely she’s seen worse as a nurse.

HEY! I never got more than codeine! Actually, after the first couple weeks I think I was down to just Tylenol.

Yeah, I still get the heebie-jeebies sometimes with zits or bug bites years afterwards. I’ve had a few “eruptions” but they were minor little things, NOTHING like the Zit From Hell

22

I still keep “THE” zit thread bookmarked. Remember how Coldfire, who was a mod then, got grossed out?

23

I got my first (and one of my worst) zits ever in July 1981, on a cross-country bus trip with the Boy Scouts.

Up to then, I had the kind of skin that movie actors and professional models shell out a fortune to dermatologists to maintain.

But the bus (an old school-type bus) had no A/C, and we travelled through the hot, humid midwest at about 45 - 50 mph.

I got on the bus at 8:00 A.M. with a clear, never-had-a-zit-before face.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside McD’s, and I went to the men’s room (like everyone else stuck on a bus for 4 hours does), and as I was washing my hands, I happened to look up into the mirror. What caught my attention first was that my face looked like an greasy, angry, red pineapple.

But right on the bridge of my nose was a medium-sized (for a zit) swollen reddish lump with a white core. I reached up and gently prodded it with a finger, and white-pus and blood spewed across the mirror, accompanied by a white-hot-needle-through-a-nostril pain.

I skipped lunch and went through half-a-roll of TP trying to stem the flow of blood.

Thus began my 3-4 year ordeal with Acne. Both of my parents were unconcerned that I might wind up looking like Noriega, even though a dermatologist was well within our income level growing up. I begged/pleaded and they finally relented, and they were a little put out by the Dr., upon seeing me for the first time, asking why they delayed in coming to see a dermatologist; a lot of damage and scarring could have been prevented with more timely treatment.

An open plea to parents of children with acne:

Kids (teens especially) are cruel motherfuckers. The can and will find the slightest fault in someone else and mercilessly ridicule them in order to bolster their own self-esteem.

If your kids have acne, especially bad acne, and you can afford it, please, for the love of (well, anything you love), get your kids to a dermatologist.

The physical scars of acne are nothing compared to the emotional scars caused by being a horrible zit-face during the formative teen years.

24

Thanks for the stories, everybody. I can sympathize with Max Torque about the ear pimples. I had several of those in my teens. Also, I want to second ExTank’s recommendation that parent’s with pizza-faced children really do need to get them to a dermatologist. Thankfully, I don’t scar easily, but severe acne is a horrendous social affliction for kids.

The semi-conclusion to my story: yesterday morning, the doctor drained my pimple. Because she made an incision, no squirting ensued but I did feel it gush pus all over my nose and cheek (they covered my eye, obviously). The only part that was painful was the injection of novocaine directly into the damn thing. I figure I have at least three more days of mopping up ooze before the swelling goes down. At least I know it could have been a lot worse!

25

I started getting cystic acne when I was 12 (I’m a chick, which makes it far worse). Finally, when I could afford to take care of it correctly, I did Acutane in my mid-20s and it was miraculous.

However, in my early 40s I still get zits, especially PMS hormone-related humdingers.

My worst two experiences happened when I was 19 and were close together.

The first was a massive, underground volano under my chin. It nestled and fumed in that soft tissue but wouldn’t give up any pus lava. It just expanded its evil roots and got redder and more painful by the day. I was finally able to burst it after two weeks and was rewarded with 1/3 cup of pus, blood, and cheesy crap.

The second beast happened about four months later and took root on my nose, over one of my nosey-bones. It hurt like a mo-fo and, like the Chin Beast, wouldn’t come to a head. Instead, it grew a bit everyday until it stood about 1/2" out from my nose and had, I swear, put roots down into my sinuses. It was excruciating and I think I started running a low-grade fever (going to the doctor in those days wasn’t my forte).

I finally declared all-out war and soaked the Nose Beast with really hot washclothes for several hours and lured it to a peak; not quite a pure “head,” but it was something. I took about 17 aspirin and waited 20 minutes then steeled myself in front of the mirror and applied a quick “do or die now” squeeze.

The NB burst with a sound somewhere between “frrrrrrip” and “glubrrrg” and an enormous amount of pus/blood/detritus hit the mirror. I extracted about three more tablespoons of gunk with some post-squeezing.

What a frickin relief that was; kind of like a zit orgasm. Two decades later I still have a pit of subterranean scar tissue where it was.