Face burn

So, goddamnit, my face is burned. I don’t know what caused it but entertain a theory. My dermatologist prescribed Retin-A for acne. She advised the lowest dose due to its nasty side-effect of drying and irritating the skin. Retin-A sleeps with the group of medications whose side-effects are possibly worse than the condition they treat. The advice says to use Retin-A at night in sparing amounts, only enough to lightly glaze the face, and only at night. Sunlight exacerbates the irritants, making Retin-A the evil twin of sunblock. Even at night though the doctor told me to follow application with a moisturizing creme -- nothing brand specific, but anything hypoallergenic and preferably containing aloe. Four times per week I put on the meds followed by a liberal dose of St Ives creme. 10 days back I noticed a strip of red roughly following my beard-line on the right side of my face. It itched like crazy. I reckoned my skin was telling me to trim a little, so I did. After trimming my beard I then noticed my cheek’s left side looked normal. Neither region gets a Retin-A application (for obvious reasons). I didn’t think much of it until the redness showed up around my eyes. Ten days since the first notice of red, neither patch disappeared despite my reducing the Retin-A to twice per week and applying the St Ives every night.

Today I trolled websites looking for advice. Most people in a similar situation described redness lasting two weeks. They used Neutrogena products as moisturizer. One woman with whom I empathised completely described her red face as sufficiently embarrassing to keep her home-bound. The redness caused such embarrassment that going into public was off-limits. Jesus, do I understand that. My acne would flare so suddenly and viciously that, just months back this happened, I refused to go into public. I’d skip Krav Maga classes, insist watching DVDs at home instead of going to the cinema, making coffee at home rather than risk the stares at Lemonjello’s. Facial acne during teen years is one thing (and expected), acne at 30 is another fucking game altogether. And it’s another fucking world as a gay guy -- where looks are paramount. Anyway, I lost faith in the St Ives creme -- in part for it seeming to make the itching worse - and am heading to Meijer later to find Neutrogena. I had a personal embargo against Neutorgena products back in the late 90’s because of Norway’s resumption of whaling. I’m refusing to look up this issue right now for entirely selfish reasons.