Why You Can't Always Believe an Expert

For the longest time I have had these little white bumps that kept popping up on my face and not going away.  I went to two doctors about this, and one, a general practitioner, gave me a prescription topical cream that didn't work and the other, a dermatologist, said that I needed laser surgery that would scar me.  The dermatologist also told me that my condition was called syringoma, and that it just pops up as you age, especially among Asian people.  No one knows why.  She gave me a list of laser centers I could contact (that wouldn't be covered by my HMO, since it's considered cosmetic), but left me feeling for the most part that there was really nothing I could do about it.

Having the diagnosis, I looked up the term on medical sites which basically said the same thing -- that no one knew the cause, and there was no cure, but laser surgery could help remove the existing ones.  The only thing was, laser treatment wouldn't prevent them from returning.  Nevertheless, I'm a big believer in home remedies and natural cures, and I decided to find a natural cure. 

So I searched for a miracle and I found something called Wart Mole Vanish.  I was lured in by the testimonials of the few people who had syringoma and said this worked for them.  It didn't hurt, too, that the product website claims to have won some prestigious award.  It didn't turn out to be a cure, but it did lessen the amount of bumps on my face, though at the same time, leaving me (somewhat) scarred with tiny pale circles where before the bumps had been.  It sounds terrible but it's not really too noticeable, and compared with the syringoma, it was a good improvement.  I did two rounds of this. 

But my mother didn't approve of me scarring my face in such a manner and so I was spurred to research some more, online.  And what I found stunned me.  The first thing I discovered was that I might not have syringoma after all.  Some nice girl posted about syringoma and milia, and that is when I first discovered that my problem might actually be something called milia.  It actually looks a lot similar to syringoma, with medical sites saying that they don't know the cause of or cure for it either.

However, the difference between syringoma and milia was vast -- more people had it, and not only did more people have it, more people knew the cause and the cures for it (at least what worked for them).  Let me just reiterate, medical sites didn't know the cause of this, and neither did doctors, but regular people with the condition did.  And it was very simple.  Very simple.  It was heavy creams.  Yes, heavy creams!  Just like in my post about kitty litter causing my allergies, another product had caused me another allergy (and this for seven years!) while all the time, I had thought it was just my skin behaving weirdly.  And doctors substantiated my thinking.

And these people with the same problem were right.  It is heavy creams.  For some people, like me, who are really sensitive, heavy creams prevent your skin from exfoliating dead skin cells especially among the thinnest parts of your skin on your face, i.e. your forehead, undereye, and chin.  I stopped applying heavy creams to the sensitive parts of my face and found in doing that no new milia formed.

But just doing that didn't get rid of the existing milia I already had.  No, that turned out to be a long drawn out process (see my post: "Milia Treatments & Cures") that I'm still going through.  But I will tell you though, that the bumps are lessening and my skin is improving. 

All this just goes to show you that you should never quit looking for a viable treatment just because one person says there isn't one, even if that person is a doctor.  As it turns out, and as I realized even more profoundly than ever, doctors don't know everything.  Sure, they know a lot, but they don't know everything.  And if they don't have what you have or haven't seen or treated what you have, chances are they won't know anything.  They can only take a best guess out of the millions of things it could be out of their medical books.  And very possibly, they might misdiagnose you.  So you can't believe what one doctor says or even two.  You have to follow your gut.  Even when I didn't know anything, and the dermatologist told me I had a condition called syringoma, I didn't think it was right.  And when I learned that syringoma is associated with Down Syndrome, that also didn't jive with me.  But when I researched and discovered it was milia, I knew it was right.

Sometimes you know better than you think.  But you have to trust yourself, even in the face of an expert, who says their diagnosis with confidence and conviction.  No one knows everything.  And you certainly can always learn more; enough to help yourself.