Teenage Spots or Serious Disease?
Chapter 1
No one can really describe the feeling as a teenager when spots begin to appear on your skin. It begins when everyone starts telling you that they are just teenage spots, will soon go. The comment stopped affecting me. It was clear that within around a month or two, it wasn’t going to happen. I left school at 15, officially in June 1977 but, I hadn’t been to school properly since January that year. I popped back for the odd exam and missed a few but I didn’t really care, like most teenagers everything was fine, not a care in the world and yeah, I’d be ok. I had no clue what I was going to do.
A few spots on my face began to manifest on my neck and soon I began to feel uncomfortable in my clothes as they spread across my back. It was that age of girlfriends as well, growing up in adolescence and I don’t need to elaborate. From that age of 15 they just would not clear up. The usual creams, chemist tablets, nothing would help. The doctors put me on Oxytetracycline and I took these for years with no effect. With my face and neck now causing me problems I ended up at St Johns Hospital for Diseases of the Skin just off Leicester Square, London. My first visit was a disaster. I sat in the waiting room and people were coming in with ailments that I could not imagine. I felt ashamed to be there and thought they needed the place more than me. I walked out and went home. Obviously, I realised I shouldn’t have done that, called, apologised and made another appointment. This time I did see the Doctor and he asked me if I would take a new drug. Roaccutane I think it was called. It would have side effects such as hair loss and dried lips but was new on the market and they were predicting great things from it. I agreed, what else could I do. They did say don’t use any creams anymore as all these do is block the pores. That’s fine by me. The acne didn’t go, nothing was going to stop it apart from age. At age 21 I went to Magaluf, Spain and kept my shirt on all holiday, in fact we went a few times. People remarked on how dry my lips were and quite frankly it was a horrible time. Over the years the back settled but the scars are still there. I still get the occasional spot on my face, normally when I’m stressed but it really wasn’t until I turned 40 that my face cleared up. It’s a terrible social disease to contract as a youngster. I had to learn to live with it, but even as you read some of the things coming, this must be the worst ever.
| I have often thought about my medical history for quite a while now. I ponder on the miracle of the human body. I also admire the miracles Doctors achieve daily while practicing medicine. When I look back on my experience I wondered if it would make interesting reading, so I thought I’d have a go, here’s my story… |