Yeah, well I was quite fortunate that a neighbour of mine was a beautician and so she knew quite a bit about what products were quite good to use on my skin and what would possibly cause breakouts and she was very nice to me. Like when I was about 17, she sort of like, we had a day and she sort of gave me the skin care routine I use now and she sort of recommended those products. I use the same brand for some anti-blemish like foundation if I put make-up on. and also very careful to get it all off in the evenings and things. It makes the make-up quite expensive [laughs] but it’d definitely be worth it.

I suppose if you’re worried about what other people think well, it’s easy to say in retrospect not to so much but, looking at sort of online forums about other people’s experiences, it was always nice to be able to see that it did get better. I didn’t believe it for a long time and when I had acne I thought arr, I’m going to have this forever. But, obviously it’s got a lot better and I’m a lot happier now so it does go away. And so, being able to see that online and if I’d of been able to speak to people that have gone through it and sort of come out the other side, that would have been good. Sort of encouraging people to get in touch with people who suffered from it.

I guess looking back to what you said earlier about how much input and sort of decisions I got to make about my treatment. I think that’s a good thing like being, like them suggesting to me, These are two topical treatments and which one do you think you would sort of prefer? I think that was quite a sort of important thing to like make me feel like I had some control over like improving, in trying to make, you know, sort of improve the condition of my skin rather than just being sort of given sort of different things and feeling like arr, it’s not working. You know, I want what I wanted’ so I think that was important. Yeah, particularly. But also being understanding, like having the treatment after, being treated for the acne then having the scar treatment. The fact that my dermatologist recognised that it was something that was bothering me. I think that was really good because I really did want something done and I didn’t feel I could necessarily ask for it. But she sort of said, you know, These treatments are available and other people have had them after the acne. Is that something you’d like? That was really important.

Yeah, I guess, I suppose even before I had acne, even I thought it was fully caused by what people ate or what people put on their skin or not washing enough. And I think that’s probably the preconception that a lot of younger children have about acne whereas actually it’s, you know, a condition that you can eat really well and you can wash your skin really well but you will still get it. So that’s quite difficult because I was always worried that people wouldn’t understand the causes. I think it would be good, I always thought it would be good if like during sort of PSHE classes and something, it was an issue talked about more, because they talk about a lot of other things that teenagers go through. But I think that’s quite an important one that they don’t really say much about, so.

What do you think would be helpful for a PSHE teacher to cover in relation to acne?

I suppose like the causes of it, sort of the, maybe the sort of impact that it has sort of socially on people and cos people before they have acne or if they don’t have acne they can say quite mean things and not mean to. Yeah, I remember actually, I was on holiday somewhere and someone mistook it for chicken pox and it was only a very tiny child. But that made me quite self-conscious.

I suppose it was more just browsing. I was sort of looking at, particularly when I was looking at online support groups in the time that I was taking Roaccutane (isotretinoin) to try and understand sort of the process of how long it took to make improvements and how to spot side-effects and things like that. And also with the scarring to try and find out what other people were sort of suffering the same sort of things. And, you know, how they felt about sort of having it on show and the interactions they’d have with other people.

And did you ever sort of post anything about yourself or was it mostly sort of reading the comments?

I think mainly it was just reading the comments. I don’t think I was ever really sure about posting about myself. Yeah, it would probably be something like, with this now, that I would do, looking back on it but at the time, I didn’t really feel like it. I didn’t feel.

Was there anything that you felt was missing or lacking or could have been better in some way?

I don’t know really. I’m not sure about the online websites because I can’t entirely remember. I guess in terms of the treatment that the dermatologist and the GP perhaps they could have maybe suggested some more sort of support sites or groups. I don’t know if they, like support groups, particularly exist but I remember sitting in like waiting rooms and for a lot of other skin conditions, they were like, you know, you can talk to these people and that sort of person’ and there wasn’t really that for acne. So, yeah.

If that had of been available, what sort of kind of things do you think it might have been beneficial for you?

I think just for maybe just more about confidence and speaking to other people about their sort of social experiences. Because I was always worried what people might think about me and, you know, if someone else had sort of had the conversation with those people and, you know, then I might have felt more sort of that people actually didn’t notice or they accepted it more.

Because I like to try and get any products that I have on my skin off in the evening. if I am going out now or staying over with friends now – that can be a bit of a pain, because if I can’t take it off, I feel quite like, oh no, I am going to end up with really bad skin tomorrow. So I do always try and come back and take it off, but. I spose that’s a bit annoying. And also when I go on things like the Duke of Edinburgh Award and my assessor was like, Why do you have all these products in your bag? I was like, Well, I don’t want my skin to be really bad after four days [laughs] of hiking. So he thought that was a bit strange but I wanted to take them with me [laughs].

So he didn’t quite understand that it was quite important for you?

Yeah, I don’t think he understood quite how important I thought it was to make sure that I had the right products and how much I cared about yeah making sure that my skin was okay.

I think you said it was your GP that did ask how it was affecting you and like the more emotional side of it?

Yeah. They did, I remember my first, I think one of the first GP appointments I went to they sort of said, you know, are people sort of talking, saying stuff about you?’ And I’d never actually really thought about what other people were saying to that extent and how that was affecting me. I hadn’t really thought about it until that point. So, in some ways, that was quite a changing moment and I, it sort of made me worry a little bit more about what people were saying. but, yeah, it was, I suppose [clears throat] I suppose at that age it’s sort of, I spose it is a concern how it affects like socialising and especially when I’d just started a new school and things so.

And with those treatments, what were they sort of like to take?

They were fine to take. I have to say, the antibiotics were a bit difficult because I couldn’t swallow tablets at that point [laughs] so I had to learn to swallow tablets. But they were fine to take. Timing, like you have to take them at like specific times of the day and that was always a bit of a pain [laughs]. But yeah I never found them too difficult to take and never had any sort of negative side effects. So it was okay.

With the difficulty of swallowing tablets, was that something that you’d had as a child as well and then it continued?

Yeah it had, I hadn’t had any paracetamol or anything. My parents had to try and persuade me to take them [laughs]. I was just was really bad, [laughs] I was afraid I was going to choke on them or something. It was a bit silly [laughs].

Did it take you a little while to get into the habit of it when you were doing the antibiotics with acne?

It did take a while to get into the habit of taking them at the right times. But since I was taking them then for a couple of years, I soon got into the [laughs] soon got into the habit.

Sort of being quite conscious of having sort of spots, particularly on my chest, meant I didn’t go swimming for a very long time, because it was on display sort of then and it sort of affected anything from sort of the clothes that I bought and things like that. So it was more me being self-conscious about it and not wanting to show it that had an impact on the things that I did.

Could you say a bit more about the clothes that you bought and how it had an impact?

Yeah, so because my scarring is in this sort of area [points to chest] I’ve got a high neck thing on now, but I didn’t buy any clothes that could possibly show it for quite a long time. Because I didn’t want anybody to see the sort of the scarring and the scabs and things. which was always a bit of a shame, because when I’d go shopping with my friends and it would be like, arr this is really nice’ and I’d be like well, I’d sort of pretended I didn’t like it so much, because I didn’t want it to show. Yeah and that sort of, that didn’t change until I was about sort of 16 and my mum went and did some shopping and she bought me some tops which I really liked and I wanted to wear despite them showing it, so.

Do you remember what it was like when you did do that, when you started wearing tops which maybe showed a little bit more of the skin?

I guess the very first time that I ever wore one that my mum had bought me that showed it, I was a little bit self-conscious. But sort of, I think after I realised that no-one was sort of saying anything or looking then I started to sort of mind less having it on show.