a poisonous lesson

I have learned the following very important life lesson in the past week:

If you see something that looks like this growing on your back fence, do not go out in your jogging bra and shorts, wearing only gardening gloves for protection, and spend 30 minutes ripping it down.

Leaves of three, let them be. Here is what my stomach now looks like:

And my right arm:

And my left arm:

I posted a few days ago that I thought a little ant or spider had chewed on me in the night, leaving a series of little bites on my arms. WRONG! Little did I know that the inocuous-looking vine growing on the back fence was poison ivy. It took me several days to make the connection because it didn’t show up until about 48 hours after I’d touched the plant, and also I’ve never had poison ivy before. Hi! Love you, poison ivy!

New areas of INSANE itchiness have been gradually spreading across my body, probably because I’d gotten the urushiol oil on my clothing, and did laundry a few days later — picking up the poisonous clothes once again and spreading it to new areas.

I have learned that Benadryl doesn’t do jack shit for the itching, but it sure will put me to sleep, so maybe it kind of accomplishes the same goal in a different way. Topical hydrocortisone also does not do jack shit. Calamine lotion does seem to work a little but turns me a sickly pink color, like I’ve been bathing in Pepto Bismol.

It’s so hard not to scratch. I’m pretty much in a state of low-grade itchiness all the time that I just try to ignore by thinking of other things. Once I start it’s basically impossible to stop. Warm showers make me itch like crazy too. You scratch until you bleed, and it continues to itch but now it hurts too much to scratch. I keep waking up in the night scratching.

I’m just glad that it’s not in my mouth (my poor husband has little areas on his legs and his side, and he also thinks probably in his throat; I must have spread it to him too) or in other, more sensitive areas. I cannot imagine the misery THAT must be.

Fun Facts About Poison Ivy:

• The leaves can be smooth or serrated, lobed or not lobed, notched or not notched.
• They aren’t always green.
• Sometimes they grow in groups of 7 or 13, not three (although I think that is poison sumac, not poison ivy).
• The leaves can look completely different from each other, even on the SAME PLANT.
• 90% of people are highly allergic to the urushiol oil in poison ivy. The first time you’re exposed to it, it usually doesn’t do anything to you but you become sensitized to it, so the next time you come in contact, you’re screwed.
• It takes as little as one billionth of a gram of urushiol oil to cause a reaction. This is such a tiny amount that 1/4 ounce of urushiol oil is enough to give poison ivy to every person on the planet. (Fill a shot glass 1/4 full: that’s how little we’re talking about).
• The oil can stay active from one to five years on any surface.