Super quick update!

   So I am just going to give a super quick update. My face has been really great. I haven't had a mite pustule in forever thank god, I do occasionally get a pimple, like a real pimple but that is just life. I do still have some mild redness on my face but the only thing that will help that will be lasers, I had my face zapped a few years ago and it helped and I need to do it again but it's not super bad so I am not really worrying about it yet. If I get hot or sick my face turns REALLY red, but other than that it's just a little flushed all the time. I got a job working at a doggy daycare which I love, I am still working on being a midwife. Other than that things are the same. I do plan on starting to work on other areas of myself like my weight. I'm not miserable with my body, I don't hate it, but I would like to be healthier and live a healthier life (I say this as I plan to stop at the store and grab a coke on my way to work -_-) I just really need to be healthier and losing weight wouldn't be a bad thing. I am FAR from skinny, but I'm okay with being fat, yes I said it I'm fat. So I would like to lost around 50 lbs even though according to BMI I need to lose like 70 to be on the high end. I am thinking about starting a blog to help me be accountable but we will see. Anyways back to the face, here are some pictures I just took. Still doing argan and tea tree oil, and occasionally if I get a zit a friend had some proactive stuff she didn't use anymore and I will use it as a spot treatment and it helps clear it up faster. It's still wierd to run my hands across my face and for it to be smooth. Especially since my nervous tick use to be picking (gross, I know). Okay off to the pictures! And yes I know for some reason I am giving major duck face, I have no excuse for it, I didn't even realize I was doing it. You can see I had a pimple right below the corner of my mouth but it's gone and healing now. At this moment I don't have a single pimple or bump, just healing remains. It blows my mind still.

Me blabbering about ....

      So I started to write this as a response to someone who has read my blog and thanked me and told me they were to shy to put up pictures. I have actually had a lot of people thanking me for the pictures and well, your welcome. When I was starting out I use to try to look at every picture I could find and try to compare my face to theirs, is mine worse, is their's worse, is their treatment working things like that. The frustrating part is we are all so ashamed of our faces none of us post pictures! I didn't find a whole lot of pictures besides the ones that doctors had taken or grainy pictures people took of their face in a current state asking for advice but not a whole lot. So when I decided to keep a journal taking those pictures wasn't easy...at all. At first I was just going to do it so I can see my progress and then I decided to post them so maybe I can help others. So once I decided I was going to post pictures on here, I wasn't going to show my whole face in case someone might know me or because I was embarrassed that's why my first pictures only show the bottom half of my face. Then I just said forget it, you know what it is what it is, maybe if the people in my life see what my face REALLY looks like they will understand it a little better. So that is where I am at today. This is my face, it's the only one I have, so deal with it and if my pictures help someone else great, I'm not going to lie it was and is really hard to put a picture of myself barefaced into the world but it's to late now! Sometimes it's just nice to see another face like yours and know that you are not the only person dealing with this. Well with that being said no one in my personal life knows about my blog... at all. To me pictures are everything, I get hope from visualization so when I was having a bad day I could look back and be like, well it could be worse.

           The hardest part of having rosacea for me is trying to explain rosacea to people that don't have it. They just don't get it! First they don't understand that it is physically painful, they just think you have pink rosy cheeks, it HURTS. Your face feels swollen and tight and it throbs and it feels like it has been in a meat grinder and it's hot, it's just miserable. I would put cold wet wash clothes on my face and it would feel soooo good. Also they don't get that it's your FACE. It's the first thing people see when they great you and meet you, it's the first impression you give, you can't hide it. You can try to hide it with makeup but you know that heavy makeup is just going to leave you in physical pain later because it's so harsh. It's just as much as an emotional/mental disease as it is physical and other people don't get it. The only people that will get it is others who are going through the same things. When I would get upset and not want to leave my house or cancel plans with friends I would get unsympathetic response of "It's just your face...get over it" I got tired of hearing that. It's easy for others to say because their insecurities can be hidden, their flaws are not on display. So that is where the blog name came from. Every single day, EVERY day, at least one (usually more) person would tell me I look flush or like I got sun or how rosy my cheeks are or ask if I was feeling ok or if I had a fever. I was so sick of it I wanted to just wear a shirt that said "yes my face is red, thanks for pointing it out I would have never known". If someone is really fat people don't point it out, if they are going bald they don't point it out but people have no problem pointing out your face. It is just plain rude.

      So basically that whole rant was to say this. Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for the support and encouragement and all the kind words. I hope if you find this and feel like you are all alone and don't plan on leaving your house ever again you can realize you are not! There are other people out their suffering and hurting physically and emotionally and it can get better! Sorry about typos and shit not making sense, I never re-read before posting (I should) or spell check. I basically have used this as a journal and just let things spill out as they come. Probably explains why things are so all over the place. So yeah, that's it for tonight! I think I will post again tomorrow.

End of the day rant.

   So, today sucked. I am just really bummed out and depressed and just wanted to lay in bed and cry but I didn't get to do that. I had to go drop a placenta off to a client (I do placenta encapsulation) and she had a house full of people. I just wanted to hide my face but she wanted to invite me in to see the baby and meet everyone. It was really nice of her but did she not see my strawberry face and that I needed to be hidden from public! On my way home I remembered I need to go to Walmart to pick up my meds. Shit, there is no way to walk into a Walmart anywhere in the country and not see someone you know. I could go to one in Alaska and see someone I know. It's ridiculous. Of course when I get there its not ready so I have to sit and wait. I try to sink and disappear but it doesn't happen. For some reason the other people there wanted to engage me in conversation. People! Again, can you not see my strawberry face and the slouching and wanting to disappear! LEAVE ME ALONE. So I finally get home and my mother, aunt, gmaw and niece show up..... Can I PLEASE just go bury my head under a pillow and hide people! Apparently not. So by this point I am upset, stressed, and at my breaking point when my mother wants computer lessons and my niece wants to watch a movie that I can't find. And then because I am snapping I am the mean, bitchy person. Also for all of the people that asked me today (and there were more than a few) If your face looked like this do you THINK it would hurt?! YES! Yes, if fucking hurts. It BURNS! Just a slight change in temperature BURNS and I am living in the swamp where it is 70 or below in a building and about 100 outside with 100% humidity. You LOOKING at...that hurts. Yes I have been to a doctor, no it is not contagious, yes I think I should put something on it. Thank god you were here for those suggestions because I would have never thought of that. Oh and the "If you think your face hurts, well it's killing me jokes" are old. Try something new. Goodnight.

P.S. My forehead, that never, ever gets bumps is covered in them. I wish you could see how bad in the picture but oh well

Day 15, this is really bad

   So I knew it would get worse, I never thought it would get this bad. My face possible looks the worst it ever has, EVER. I don't know if it was the nu-stock or a big die off of mites or what but it is super bad. My face looks like a strawberry, it's slightly swollen, it hurts and I woke up to about 100 tiny pustules, to many to count. I was in shock when I looked in the mirror this morning. I mean I guess it's a good thing that I managed to kill off that many mites but damn, I am not leaving my house unless I HAVE to. I usually on show the close ups but today I am going to show close ups and my full face so you can get the full effect. That's all I can say right now. I am going to go cry now. Warning you may not want to look at these pictures.

*Update to original. Please do a test patch to see how you react to Nu-Stock before using it, I do end up having an unpleasant response to it (as you can see here) and I'm not sure if it was an allergic reaction or if my skin is just really sensitive. I would recommend putting a tiny bit either on your forearm or under your jawline first and waiting at least 2 days to see how you react before putting it on your entire face.**

Day 15

Random thoughts and a slight rant.

   So the reason I named this blog "it's just your face" isn't because I feel that your face is not important (if that was the case I wouldn't bother with a blog about mine) but because that is what I kept being told. "whats the big deal, it's just your face" Just your face? Are you kidding me!! Other than your general health, when it comes to your body, what is more important than your face? Your face is YOU. No one else has your face, other people have arms, legs, boobs, no one else has your face, it's yours alone. It's how people identify you, and how people judge you, it's the first thing people see, it's how people remember you, you can't hide it, it's right there front and center for people to stare at, judge and criticize. When something is wrong with your face people assume something is wrong with you.

   People in general tend to not think before they talk but when it comes to commenting on your face either, people tend to be more blunt. I have walked into work and people say things such as "Ohhh what happened to your face?" "Are you feeling okay? Because you are not looking okay" "Wow! You got some sun over the weekend" (I never left my house -_-)

   Today was hard day, I had to explain to a friend why I didn't go to her gallery show last night making me a lame friend. I didn't go to clinicals today because I didn't want to be seen out like this, and when my mom came home I was in tears. When she asked what was wrong I just looked at her and said "really!?" She knew. He response was "You know it probably doesn't look as bad to other people as it does to you, most people probably won't even notice. I think your making a bigger deal out of it than it really is." I asked her how would she feel if she woke up tomorrow and looked in the mirror and saw her face like this. She just got up and left. Yep, that's what I thought. It's so easy for other people to dismiss it, or be like "it's no big deal" and that is only because it's not their face. Let their face suddenly become flaming red and burn like the dickens or break out in dozens of painful pustules and let's see how long it's no big deal.

    I also don't think people understand the PHYSICAL pain and discomfort someone with rosacea deals with, I think they just think it's a red or pimpley face and that's it. They don't understand that your face feels like its on fire, the don't understand the throbbing feeling, that it feels swollen or tight and that even just splashing it with water to try to rinse it can hurt because it is so sensitive to outside stimulus. There is nothing worse than your facing feeling hot like it's on fire but you can't sit in front of a fan to cool it off because the breeze of the fan hurts your delicate skin. Rosacea is so much more than meets the eye. *Sigh*

   Well, I will end this on a funny lesson that may or may not come from personal experience. So if you happen to be walking through lets say a Whole Foods and a sales associate comes up to you and asks you if you need help the proper response might not be "Sure! See I found out that the reason my face is looking like this is I have face mites and I hear tea tree oil kills them so I am looking for everything tea tree oil!" See if you have the need to explain your condition DON'T. They might just look at you with horror, then disgust and take a few steps away from you. Or so I have heard....from a friend....who also has face mites. 

I think I made a mistake.

   So tonight my face (mostly chin) was extra scabby feeling and crusty feeling so I decided to use a wash cloth to kind of exfoliate it...big mistake. My face started stinging right away and I knew I shouldn't have done that. I usually don't use a wash cloth on my face, I just use my fingers lightly. WHY DID I CHOSE TO DO THIS!! Anyways I got of the shower and my face was RED and you could see where every little p&p is at and I must have about 40 of them. There was a spot that I though was a pimple but apon closer inspection it is just a cluster of p&p.

   So tonight I am putting on the wash and let it soak for about 30 minutes and then I will slather on the argan & tto before bed. During the beginning of the day my face feels good, no burning or flushing and the p&ps don't have pressure but by the end of the day I get more flushing, and the p&ps feel like a zit that needs to be popped (gross sorry). So I think when I wake up I am going to slather on more argan/tto mix or do a coconut/tto mix to see if it helps during the day. I wish I could figure out how to take pictures that shows how bad it is IRL.
 

I should have kept my mouth shut

I should have never said anything about my face not burning because all of a sudden its on FIRE. I haven't ate, drank anything or done anything. I don't know what has set it off but it BURNS. I might go dunk my head in cold water.