My Struggle

By Lee Thompson  Abstract:  This is the first-person narrative of a young woman’s pursuit of beauty and how it went awry.  Illness narratives come in three types: restitution, quest, and chaos.  Although she is still on a quest, there are aspects of chaos in this woman’s story.  Shame and humiliation are subtexts in patients’ stories, but physicians rarely hear them.  These emotions are not generally inquired about during the truncated medical encounter. All I wanted to have perfect teeth. In America, if you want to be beautiful, you have to have perfect white teeth. As I blindly pursued my goal, no one ever informed me that whitening my teeth could … Continue reading

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Relative Risk – A Near Fatal Case of Acne

By Richard Sontheimer Professor, Department of Dermatology, University of Utah School of Medicine, richard.sontheimer@hsc.utah.edu Keywords:  Acne, isotretinoin, Accutane, depression, suicide He was an intense young man who interacted with me differently than other patients. Each time I entered the exam room, he welcomed me by using my first name.  Unusual, as he was 40 years my junior and not a personal acquaintance prior to his first clinic visit. He had presented for scarring cystic facial acne. Five months later, he had completed a course of oral isotretinoin (Accutane®) with complete clearing of all inflammation from his face. While winding up my last clinic visit with him, I asked the required … Continue reading

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