The agony of acne

I am not taking any pictures of myself for a while because I have acne worse than I ever have in my life.  I should probably go to a dermatologist, but after avoiding the doctors of Merced for over 3 years, and then finally finding a decent primary care physician, I went in with a whole laundry list of referrals I needed.  There was the opthamologist to check whether I had a torn retina (I didn't), a GI doctor for a 5 year cancer screen, and an ENT for a hearing check and possible laser surgery on my eardrums (hooray!).  I was about to mention a dermatologist even before my face was in this sorry of a state, but the doctor said "I think that's enough for now".  I am not sure if this was because the insurance companies look down on primary care physicians who give out lots of referrals, or whether he is concerned about me having too many doctors all at once, or maybe he just thought that I was overdoing it.  Probably all of them are legitimate reasons for not wanting to give me yet another referral, but here I am with a terrible complexion trying to find ways of improving it.  

I thought about getting a facial but they are A LOT more expensive in Palo Alto than other places.  I kept going to spa after spa thinking that one must be reasonable, but they got more expensive every place I checked.  When I finally hit a place that charged $760 for a facial, I gave up, went to the grocery store and got a shiny purple package of Stridex for $7.65.  It seems to be helping except that my skin is now a beautiful glowing red, yes...more than usual.  (I guess the positive aspect of this color change is that no one can tell when I get embarrassed.)  If it weren't for the fact that I have to get my whole sewer line replaced next week, I would probably go for a ridiculously expensive facial, but this seems like a good time to exercise some amount of financial responsibility.

Research seems to have started going well in earnest today.  I woke up at 3:00 AM thinking about citrate.  One should never take citrate for granted and I had been.  When I factored citrate metabolism into our results, it all started making sense.  We got rid of the citrate and the data are very pretty now.