Dermatology and things.

I've posted a ton about skincare on this blog. I used Rodan and Fields' Unblemish for years. It worked for years. I sold RF because it worked. I've since gotten away from that just because my heart wasn't in it. I still believe in the products but my use tapered off after having Wells just because my skin became unpredictable post-partum and I didn't want to use my previous measure of "what good skin looks like" when the rules and the game had changed. It's like judging your pre-baby body in comparison to your post-baby body. You can't do it.

I never had "glowing" skin during pregnancy but my skin wasn't terrible either. I still used Unblemish for most of my pregnancy and continued all my normal routines when it came to skin/makeup.

Sometime this past summer, I started getting these awful cysts on my forehead. They would start out as what looked like a pimple under the skin, but would last for weeks and be incredibly painful. I've had the occasional cystic pimple in the past but never more than one at a time and they would just be random every few months, not systematic and constant in the same spots. Now, I would have anywhere between 1 and 4 at a time. I thought they were from wearing a baseball cap, so I made sure to wash my hat every week (and I've worn very dirty hats in the past ..#prairielife... and this never happened). Nothing seemed to make a difference. Scott would pop them and they'd get better but it took days for them to get to the popping stage.

In June, I had called my doctor's office and asked for a referral to dermatology. I called initially just because I wanted to have a mole-check done. I had developed a ton of new moles while I was pregnant, with the hormones and my skin stretching. Some of them were pretty strange-looking to me.
In the military...like if I were at a military base hospital...I would go in for a PCP appointment, tell them my concern, and they'd refer me. Here, I called and asked if I could just be referred. They gave me a number to call, and that number verified the claim, and then I had a dermatology number, and then I had to call my PCP back with the appointment information so it could be sent to Tricare...then, I was able to schedule an appointment for two months out. Literally. Took two months to get in as a new patient.

So I spent the summer fretting over this appointment, which was super productive.

After they did the mole-check and looked at a weird splotch on my foot (a fungus, apparently), the PA asked ever-so-helpfully if I wanted to "do something" about the acne.

I had a few forehead cysts on this day.

I said, What can we do?

He said, What have you tried?

I said, I used RF Unblemish for a long time and that worked well enough but I haven't used it for awhile.

He seemed to think I was serious about skincare then because RF isn't a small investment.

He said I could try some prescriptions and wrote down a bunch of medicines and pharmacy information for me.

After a whole lot of insurance/pharmacy issues, I was able to get three prescriptions, from two different pharmacies.

One wash, to use once or twice a day. One gel to put on in the morning. One cream to put on at night.

I went back to the dermatologist a few weeks later, to have a mole surgically removed. I don't even have a picture of this mole because I didn't want to see it. (Avoidance is my strategy, as a rule, which isn't awesome when it comes to healthcare.) It was on my back, anyway. Scott said it looked kind of weird, but it wasn't new. I had a bunch of very weird looking new moles that arrived with pregnancy and post-partum. They were light-colored though, so doctors usually don't worry about those. I also had some melasma spots on my face from pregnancy but they are pretty much gone at this point.

Hormones.

Anyway. I had the mole removed, I had stitches for almost two weeks, then I got the results saying it was considered "mild to moderately abnormal" but no additional treatment was needed.

They recommended yearly skin-checks. I'm pretty sure this is the general rule for everyone in the first-world, though. How many of you actually do it? I haven't been to a dermatologist since I was in Alaska having cysts removed and before that I was 14, having a busted capillary removed. I believe they offered to send me to one in Missouri at one point for acne treatment, but I don't actually remember going.

I'm sure it will be a ball of fun, trying to get an appointment with an on-base dermatologist next year when we're not living here anymore.

Leading to...I go back to this dermatologist in December for a check on the medications, to see how they're working. The good news? They are! I mean, it's amazing. I don't have some set of before/after pictures but I'm feeling really good about the results. I don't even have crazy dryness/redness as a side effect. The not-great news is that I will have to ensure I am able to actually stay on these medicines when we move next year, if I'm still using them then.

Military life and all.

Trying to figure out how to continue treatments/care and transfer prescriptions and find decent doctors is probably the hardest part of the civilian end of military life.