[Humour] *Breaks out for the 10000th time this month*
![[Humour] *Breaks out for the 10000th time this month*](https://i.redd.it/y3a52bufqci41.jpg)
Posted Feb 21, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC
12K130
Patch testing is for the weak! I went straight for two new products while on a Lamictal taper (bipolar med with high risk of rash and Stevens-Johnson syndrome)!!! Metal af.
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Are you sure you're taking your meds? I'm seeing some risky behavior here. /s
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Hey I was actually in the hospital for over a week because of Stevens Johnson’s from Lamictal. It’s no joke the scariest thing that I’ve experienced on my skin. Fuck that
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I’m really sorry that happened to you. I have been an anxious mess through this whole taper onto it. Stopped it once because I had weird ulcers appear at the back of my mouth. Re-challenge has been good so far. Up to 100 mg with no issues. Terrified it will worsen my acne now. But the promise of stability is inviting.
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If it makes you feel better I’ve been on it for many years and it didn’t effect my acne at all. The only thing that’s ever changed mine was birth control pills. I hope you find the medication helpful and everything goes well for you!
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I actually had this reaction to Lamictal too, my skin was so hot at one point the nurses just kept dumping buckets of ice onto my bed to keep me from convulsing.
It’s incredible that at least 3 of us on this thread have had the same reaction since it’s so rare.
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Did you have issues with acne while on Lamictal? I'm on Lamictal AND lithium. Sooo many tiny blackheads.
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Not OP but Lamictal reaaally fucked up my system back when I took it. Skin breakouts, nausea to the point of throwing up, it really didn’t agree with me. Lurasidone seems to be working a lot better, but so much of this stuff depends on personal experience, bodies react very differently to psych meds.
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Haven’t been on it long enough to tell yet!
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Omg I was wondering why my chin went to shit... I never thought it coyld be the lamictal!
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I got Botox for the first time ever while titrating up on Lamictal. The only reaction I got is that every pinpoint where it was injected turned into a pimple lol.
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Oh hey I just learned about Stevens-Johnson! No Sulfa drugs fo you!
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I think about this and this sub in general every time I do that, which is... all the time. In fact, I've never patch tested anything.
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Me neither. I should have a patch testing purity ring 😂
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I've had 7 job interviews since Christmas. I have my 8th Tuesday and 9th the week after. My skin is the worst it's been in years. Someone needs to give me s job before I have no skin left!
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Hey good luck! I'm rooting for ya!
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It's coming!
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You’ve got this! Just be yourself and make sure to practice some before you go so that you can remember the key points you want to make.
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If it makes you feel better, the first job offer I got was for an interview where I had the worst acne in my life.
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If it burns, that means it’s working. -me
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Lol but seriously patch testing can go suck it. Different parts of my face give me different reactions so it's gotta be all or nothing for me.
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Step 1: buy a new product to help fix skin
Step 2: slather it on
Step 3: get a reaction
Step 4: try again at least two more times just in case
Step 5: cry at stupidity
Step 6: repeat steps 1-5
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I feel triggered lol
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Wait wait wait am I supposed to be patch testing on my face? I always pictured the well-disciplined among us doing it on wrists, etc.
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My (personal) problem with patch testing on a body part is that it'll only account for any severe allergic reactions. Slight irritations might not appear on my wrist but could still show up on my face. Plus it doesn't tell me if a product will break me out.
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My thoughts exactly. Pretty sure I could slather my wrists with butter and jam nightly all month and still be chillin.
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Yeah but I’d rather have a serious reaction not on my face.
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As others have mentioned, patch testing is not a guarantee that you won’t have any reaction to a product; there are a lot of variables. But it helps to narrow down by testing near the area the product will be applied. Behind the ear, or back of the neck (close to your hairline) are good baselines to test products you intend to use on your face.
Trying a face product on your wrist/hand will only help determine if you like the texture and/or scent, unless you have an actual allergy to one of the ingredients.
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I feel attacked
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My God I am so bad at patch testing like, ever. Before I got into skincare I used to think I had sensitive skin because it would get dried out, but it turns out that I just wasnt achieving a good moisture balance with the products I was using. My skin is actually not sensitive to the vast majority of skincare ingredients, turns out. I use a ton of products and try new things all the time without patch testing first, and the only thing I've ever had a poor reaction to was some kind of Olay product my boyfriend bought me because it was discounted at the grocery store one day. And I was pregnant at the time so who knows what my skin was doing.
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Dude I feel this I recently just got out of a bad depression spell decided to take of myself 3 days in and my face breaks out bad nothing but red cheeks and dry skin.
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Lmfao I bought CeraVe AM with the SPF and slathered it all over my face. Went to work and my face felt warm, thought I was just working extra hard. My coworkers asked me why my face was so red, I looked in the mirror and I was a tomato. Was red for the whole shift and all the way home. Threw the bottle out and bought a PM instead 😂
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So many sunscreens break me out. It is ridiculous. I want to have healthy skin and I feel like I can't with sunscreen
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I struggled with sunscreen as well! I swear by Elta MD's Clear UV one - linking it here! I use the clear one (not tinted) as I'm trying to get my fungal acne under control. I have used the tinted one before, and didn't necessarily notice it breaking me out and it had a nice subtle coverage to it!
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Thanks I will try that one!
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I just apply new products to half my face so theres a side by side comparison
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Do you actually see a difference?
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Sometimes. It helps to see if a product is breaking me out or if it’s something else, since only one side will have a reaction.
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Woops!
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Triggered
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Fuck it! We’ll do it live!
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Ok this made me cackle 😂
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I actually reeled myself in this month after getting a few new products and settled on one to start for now and see how it goes. We’ll see how long that lasts lol
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This was me with glycolic acid cream. I've learnt my lesson now lol.
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Yes!
Me with the DE Framboos and the Ordinary aha/bha.
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S L A T H E R
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Yes!!! Me!!!!! After wrecking my skin after going for the gold with Retinoid use ..I learned this lesson the hard way.
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I feel seen. Slathered on TWO new eye creams today. Two.
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Haha I’m so guilty of this. So many times I put a new product in my hands in the evening, look at them, mentally say “f*ck it” and slap it on before I chicken out. Then try to sleep before I get too worried about it. The worst thing is, my brain gets more false confidence every time since I’ve never had a really bad reaction. My time is coming, I’m sure...
Confession:I always advise that people patch test but when I get a new product I just put it on and hope for the best. 😂
Well of course! Does anyone patch test??? It’s the good advice that you just can’t take. It’s a black fly in your chardonnay. It’s 10k spoons when all you need is a knife. It figures.
It’s like RAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNN
On your weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedddddddddddddddddddingggg daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy
I do, but I wait like 3 to 4 hours...
OMG me too. I don’t practice what I preach lol. But hey you’re likely helping people anyway :)
To be fair I do try to avoid products that I know will be problematic so at least I still have a shred of self preservation. 🤷🏼♀️
You know what's better than a quarter sized area of perfect skin?
An entire face of ^^^^^^possibly perfect skin ^^^^^^maybe
Honestly though patch testing is never going to work for me! Unless you’re someone that’s so sensitive that you’ll break out in hives, it’s a little silly. You’re not going to grow one singular zit in the place you happened to decide to patch test.
It’s also about which part of your face is most prone, how you ate/drank/washed that week, your air humidity blah blah. Every patch test would pass for me on my cheek. Every face application will not.
I tried a mild glycolic acid toner than I read about and people were fine leaving it on over night. I burned my whole face. I am very careful now
Same! If it has actives I’ll patch test
I don’t know if I would call it hives but I did get red from a product I was very happy I patch tested. Now I’m 100% sure to patch test everything. I guess I’m one of those sensitive people. I wish I could just slap things on and hope for the best!
Literally never patch tested and I'm up to...
5 products in the morning
6 at night...
Everyone warned me about just going full bore with 1% retinol every day without ever having used retinol before. "You'll peel!" They said, well nothing happened and my skin looks great.
YES that’s exactly what got me on this dangerous path hahaha. Went balls to the wall with a retinol without issue. I keep waiting for this life on the edge to catch up with me!
Balls to the retinwall
Anyway, here's Retinwall...
Fuck em, they don't know anything
I'm always right, until I'm not. But in the mean time... Fuck em!
Yeah I think your skin would have to be very naturally dry to peel from non-prescription retinol. They’re not that potent.
My peels on my nose when I use retinol but I expect that at this point and I’d rather have some flakey skin on my nose than my whole face be peppered with zits so trade offs.
I stupidly started with the 0.2% and regret it because my skin never reacts to anything and now I want to use it up before I move to a higher %. It’s doing something but I know something stronger would make a real difference.
I'm in the same boat, but I've had it for half a year and am only about halfway through the bottle, so I'm just gonna get rid of it and move on to 0.5%. The shelf life is 6 months anyways so might as well pay attention to that for the first time in my life.
Ugh, I'm so jealous. I have a .25% that I applied over my night cream and still flaked all over my face and my eyes were crusty and in pain after 1 application D=
2 weeks after that, I tried again last night. Waited 30 min after washing and letting an HA absorb in, then mixed the retinol with my night cream. I don't know if it's too diluted to even be effective but I just want to stop reacting so badly.
2% or gtfo. I go full throttle.
I did the same thing until I discovered I was allergic to charcoal...by using a charcoal face mask.
ohh boy
I swear I ate Benadryl for a week, it was awful. It looked like I had gotten the worst sunburn you could imagine and had blistered.
And me, being the idiot I am, didn’t take it off when it started tingling. Left it on for however long the package said maybe minus 5 minutes cuz I just couldn’t take it.
How did you know to take Benadryl?
My face was super itchy and swollen, it looked almost like a sunburn. I’m allergic to everything so I just assumed lol
This was me with glycolic acid cream (straight to an overconfident 12%). Anyway, I've learnt my lesson now lol.
What's really bad is when you mess up your skin so bad that otc products aren't helping anything and everything you try just burns ( even simple moisturizers) and no derm you go to wants to acknowledge why your skin is so messed up and therefore doesn't approach healing your skin the right way. So you're skin just kind of dies .......btw this is me....I should've patch tested differin somewhere else on my body before putting it on my face. I'm learning that I have over-reactive skin in general and that I might eternally just need products that are very simple. What's funny is that no derm will suggest any type of treatment plan to help calm down my skin. It over reacts to everything. My environment....food.....stress....EVERYTHING ( but only where I applied the retinoid, so that's how I know the retinoid caused this madness). So yes...everyone please patch test. My situation isn't unique or rare. I've found lots of stories on the internet including Reddit, where women and girls have really screwed up their skin and no doctor they go will even acknowledge what they're experiencing day to day with their new skin problems a.k.a SEVERE SENSITIVITY AND DISCOMFORT caused by like I said ...EVERYTHING. Since no doctor will acknowledge my extreme discomfort, they cant suggest an appropriate plan of action to help it. Pain killers dull the pain and discomfort caused by the INSANELY BAD irritation ( which btw, one derm was SO DISMISSIVE to my symptoms that I can only say she just wanted to get me out of her office because she prescribed me a very serious nerve medication to numb the pain that would've done ABSOLUTELY nothing for what was actually causing the issue--- which is the fact that my skin is so easily severely inflamed because it never healed from the reaction it had to the differin .1%) Don't find yourself in this situation, #1 with your skin ending up being so unfathomably problematic and then #2 also having doctors try to convince you to try serious medications without having a decent explanation, #3 leaving your doctor's office with absolutely no plan of treatment that makes sense. Someone suggested that it might've been an allergic reaction to the product differin .1%. I agree....but just because we have a possible explanation doesn't mean my problems just disappear. Every doctor I've gone to immediately tried to treat my existing acne, wouldn't acknowledge the current hour to hour discomfort and flat out debilitating pain I experience even while sitting in front of them, and would tell me they don't see anything wrong. It's been the most unexplainably, discouraging, humiliating experience of my life to have doctors just dismiss me the way they have. I've been dealing with this for an entire year now. I can use whatever moisturizer that claims to calm your skin and that's fine...but there is something FUNDAMENTALLY wrong and dysfunctional with my skin. I firmly believe that my skin in its resting state is just super reactive. So I never should've used such a strong retinoid....probably ever. My skin (facial skin over my nose and inner cheeks only) has frequent flare ups of some kind and acquires new damage every time a serious flare up happens that never heals. Nobody I talk to, even medical professionals, will try to help me find out what to label these flare ups or even advise me on what I can do to stop the possible permanent damage I get from them. This started happening after I used the differin. I only used it once. I could keep going on and on. Patch test ......that is my point.
I've never heard of this happening to anybody else before!! It happened to me after I think I combined two products that didn't mix well and suddenly I'm allergic to all of my moisturisers, even ones that are made for babies!!
My skin is on its way back to being normal after I just left it completely alone for around a month, no moisturiser or anything. Washed with warm water and put vaseline on the parts where my skin cracked - absolutely not the ideal solution but no doctors could tell me why it had happened or how to fix it besides prescribing more creams I was reacting to
Now I manage to use TO hyaluronic acid, squalane cleanser and their natural moisturising factors after introducing them one by one each week
What were the products? Are you careful about sun/ weather protection?
I think it was some nip and fab glycolic acid pads that reacted with something in my normal moisturiser (palmers cocoa butter) I probably only used the glycolic acid two or three times at night, and I always wear sunscreen but had to stop after my skin started reacting to everything
Well wrote, I kind of feel the same but havent been able to word it so well, my face is and has been so whacky after differin, very sensitive but still complete over all “ugh” hope it gets better for you soon.
Aw man that sucks royally :( have you ever had an allergy patch test? I had a friend with dermatitis in response to almost everything...she can’t use normal laundry detergent or soap! But she went to an allergist and was able to narrow down specific triggers. Maybe worth a go if you are able!
I haven't. I have problems communicating with doctor's effectively and I actually went to an allergist to be tested for things that would affect my skin. And all they did was a food allergy test. My main issue is getting doctor's to listen to me. So I could try being more specific. I didn't know I could ask for a patch test. I feel like any doctor I've gone too should've suggested that.
I don’t know if it’s standard- I believe my friend asked for it specifically! We were in grad school and happened to have quite comprehensive insurance so it was covered. Maybe read about it a bit and then ask if you could have it done to rule out that your irritation isn’t coming from some common product you don’t expect. I wish you the best!
I had patch testing done for contact dermatitis. Happy to answer any questions! My allergist didn't do it in house so I went to a contact dermatitis specialist to get it done. It's certainly an ordeal but it was really helpful to find out what was irritating me.
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I have zero patience and discipline for patch testing so I just jump right the fuck in.