Effudex Or Carac, Need Advice

Well, I am going to have to use one of them because of actinic keratosis on my lip. I figure if I am going to be miserable I might as well do my whole face and chest at the same time as I had a terrible burn with scabing when I was in Junior High School. Get frozen, biopsied at least 2x a year or more.

What do you think?  Is the pain such that I couldn't do it. What if I had enough pain medication? How about showering? Everyone seems to say that water is painful.

There is never a good time to do it. We belong to a Winter Dance Club. There is a window from the first of Dec. to the first of Feb. that I could do it. My family would love me, no matter how bad I looked.

Really need help from those with experience. Thanks

On 9/14/2007 freckles39 wrote:

Well, I am going to have to use one of them because of actinic keratosis on my lip. I figure if I am going to be miserable I might as well do my whole face and chest at the same time as I had a terrible burn with scabing when I was in Junior High School. Get frozen, biopsied at least 2x a year or more.

What do you think?  Is the pain such that I couldn't do it. What if I had enough pain medication? How about showering? Everyone seems to say that water is painful.

There is never a good time to do it. We belong to a Winter Dance Club. There is a window from the first of Dec. to the first of Feb. that I could do it. My family would love me, no matter how bad I looked.

Really need help from those with experience. Thanks

I am now in my third day of post-treatment recovery.  The four weeks of applying efudex to my entire face was very difficult but I stuck to it.  I had trouble sleeping at night almost from the beginning.  I lost appetite and just felt down all the time.  Lack of sleep had a lot to do with that.  As the skin heels after the treatments stop the skin is itchy, flaky and sore.  If you have two months to take the treatment that should be enough.  Even after only 3 days the normal color to my face is returning, the dead cells are dropping off continuously and with the help of Aquaphor I can relieve the irritation and sleep through the night.  I don't know if it works completely or not since I haven't completed my recovery and won't visit the doctor again until I do.  It was not pleasant to be sure but I'm hopeful it worked.