Benevolence aforethought

Or, "Give thanks in all things."

Ok, a few months ago, I would have titled this thingummy "Insult onto Injury," but God's done it again, so hey. And once again, wow, that sense of humor...!

So anyway. I have multiple sclerosis, and due to various symptoms including temporary blindness (and the most ridiculous dental nightmare ever) I spent most of the second half of 2006 on heavy doses of steroids. For the record, I hate being on steroids, and short of another bout of blindness or the hideous bone pain I had with the dental snafu, I will not be going on them again. Not surprisingly, the steroids gave me first a terrible rash all over my back, then shortly thereafter, some horrible acne all over my face, which refused to go away.

Argh. I fight the whole vanity thing as most young(ish) females do, but I thought I was making a bit of progress until I noticed how much I was being affected by my zitty face! I literally couldn't stand the thought of being seen in public. I did my grocery shopping at 2 am. I did some playful griping at God about it, and as a result found that I kept thinking of Corrie ten Boom's "Thank you, Lord, for the fleas" episode.

So I started giving thanks for the freakin' zits. I will admit that I was not feeling particularly thankful at the time, but by gosh and by golly I gave thanks for 'em.

Nevertheless, I kept trying to get rid of them. After spending a few months trying all the OTC acne medication I could find, only to see things getting worse and worse, it occurred to me that maybe the acne was somehow a symptom of MS rather than directly caused by the steroids. MS messes up your immune system, and a healthy immune system is bound to help fight off the bacteria involved in causing acne, so it sorta makes sense, right? Anyway, I did some web searching on the idea, and immediately found...

"Acne medicine helps fight MS." Tons and tons of articles (though most of them basically the same article) kept telling me that a commonly prescribed acne antibiotic had been shown to actually fix some of the damage caused by MS lesions. !!!! Not just help stop, but actually fix, which is downright revolutionary. The effect wears off after a couple of years, but still!

So, I hotfooted it down to a dermatologist, and killed two birds with one stone. She was perfectly happy to prescribe the antibiotics, and after about a month I was feeling so much better that, at my 6-month checkup, my neurologist said that if she didn't know better she'd think I was perfectly healthy. We're talking remission levels of healthy. Really, how often do you get to hear a doctor call you perfect? I recently got an MRI (haven't gotten the results back yet) but I fully expect to see a serious reduction in lesions.

So, wow. Thank you, Lord, for my acne!