Cock-chugging poison ivy. GRR!

The BBQ Pit
1

No, the poison ivy is not actually chugging cock. However, it got my arm. MY ARM.

See, when we moved into this house (May '99) there was poison ivy around the borders of the back yard. I bought Round-Up* and sprayed the crap out of it.

Next year…more of the same, though the poison ivy had diminished considerably.

Last year I got a few lingering little pieces.

This year I went back there and found only one patch: a towering mass of poison ivy in the back corner of the yard - as tall as me, green, lustrous, and healthy. SPRAYED IT. Sprayed it like Ron Jeremy at a bukkake festival. Watched it wilt and wither and brown and die.

Well…I’ve been clipping vines from the sides of trees and getting them off of the fence. It’s fulfilling, makes the yard look neater, and makes it so if one of the kids lets an errant toy wander to the side of the yard, it won’t be scary to go reaching for it.

Between two trees - after I had finished de-vining - I found one tiny poison ivy plant trying to take root. Sprayed the crap out of it, of course; no problem.

EXCEPT.

Now I have a few little red bumps on the inside of my right forearm. Tiny little red bumps. They itch a bit. They are each capped with a tiny bubble of clear liquid.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!! NO NO NO!! FUCK! FUCK YOU! AAAGH NO, FUCK! I’m about 99% sure it’s poison ivy. Especially since it was in one place on my arm yesterday…and now there’s a little bit more about four inches down from the first bit.

I’ve washed and witch hazeled it, and band-aided it so I can’t spread it anywhere else. There’s also SOMETHING between my index and middle finger on my left hand. I’m 70% sure it’s just eczema, but since I realized what was on my arm I’ve realized it could be…COULD BE…more goddamned poison ivy. I washed and with hazeled and band-aided it too, just in case.

I spent an entire summer when I was younger washing with lye soap three times a day to get rid of this shit. Poison ivy LOVES me. It ADORES me. My skin oils are a combination of chocolate, champagne, and ambrosia to it. I am very unhappy right now.

So pretty. So pernicious. So fucking ITCHY.

  • Mother Nature fucks with ME…I fuck with HER.
2

Ooh, I hate the stuff too. Last summer I had a couple dozen square inches on the insides of both of my knees that itched and oozed for a month. Poison ivy SUCKS. And as a sidenote, I think calamine lotion is crap.

3

Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m just now recovering from a nasty patch of it on my left wrist, elbow, and bicep, gained from clearing bamboo from the back yard. Curse the stuff!

Steroids, however, did wonders for me; I’d recommend getting them sooner rather than later.

Daniel

4

Aieee, I hate that stuff. I managed to get it on my eyelid once as a kid. Fortunately, I’m not horribly sensitive and if I wash as soon as I realize I’ve touched it, I don’t get a rash. My mom has a spot on her arm that, if she gets the rash anywhere else, will break out too every time.

5

Poison ivy sucks.

When I got anywhere near poison ivy as a kid, it meant a week off from school because of how sick I would get. My face would swell up so badly that my eyes and nose could swell shut.

Once a neighborhood friend of mine came to the door and didn’t recognise me. He stammerred “Is Debaser there?” while wearing a horrified look on his face.

Of course being an active boy scout and camping, hunting, and hiking in the outdoors as regularly as I did as a kid meant that this was a regular occurance. I swear, I don’t think I even needed to touch the stuff, just breathing air nearby would infect me. About once a year I would go through the whole process.

The steriods that they gave me to fight it would keep me up for about three days straight. Which is just fucking lovely when all you want to do is itch so bad that your mind nearly escapes you.

Fuck poison ivy.

6

I would think that antihistamines would work to help stop the itching, so you don’t scratch. Maybe cortisone cream too? Hope you get better soon.

I’ve been EXTREMELY lucky in that the sole time my skin actually did contact the stuff, I didn’t break out. An amazing bit of luck, and I’m still very careful not to come in contact with it because I know next time I could break out. Poison ivy’s like that.

It’s common for people to not react to poison ivy at first, and then one day they do. At least, that’s what my family doctor told me when I was marveling at my good luck. (I was in because of an ear infection, summer allergies, bleh.)

Could some of those vines have been dead poison ivy? Even the stems can cause a reaction. Good luck, hope you don’t encounter any more of the nasty stuff.

7

First, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Well, at least it’s not in weird places… yet.

Second, I once caught it from my dog! The evil couch-monkey.

Third… try aloe yet?

8

Hope your itching is at least tolerable…

Just in case you hadn’t thought of it and your poison ivy takes on a kind of odd look, it is possible that hwat you have is scabies. It is a mite that loves between fingers, wrists, elbows and other joints. If your eruptions are clustering around these areas and not getting better, see your doctor as the treatment is a prescription cream. My nephew got it from doing yard work and it we all thought it was poison ivy at first…

9

My cousin accidentally wiped with poison ivy once, when he was out on a job for the phone company in the middle of nowhere, and there were no washrooms anywhere near. It got into his blood stream and he couldn’t move at all for the longest time. He was in pain 24/7. I remember hearing something about a steroid possibly being used to help, but I’m not sure if it went that far. I’ve never seen anything so funny and painful as that. Well maybe it was a lot more painful than funny.

10

OAK-N-IVY brand.

Tec Laboratories, Inc.
Albany, OR 97321

1 800 ITCHING

If I remember correctly, it was invented by/for people working in the lumber industry.

It NEUTRALIZES the oils that cause poison ivy. I’ve never found anything better. Non-prescription. No steroids. I’ve used it when I was exposed to it working in an empty lot and didn’t get it because I used this to wash off the oil before it could be absorbed into my skin. Amazing stuff.

By the way, tho I didn’t believe it either, at first; apparently it is NOT spread via those clear little bubble blisters. So say the docs of three clients of mine that had it. (I’m a massage therapist) Its spread underneath the skin. Who knew?
You’ll never use anything else.

Good luck,

Dian

11

www.poison-ivy.org. Put it in your Favorites. Be one with it.

I was one of those kids who had poison ivy nearly year-round. My mom bought Caladryl by the case. The trick with calamine, we found, is that only Caladryl brand worked for those of us who apparently rolled in it. **And don’t forget to shake before using. ** You have to keep after it. Don’t dress the bubblies for just a day or two and declare yourself cured. Give it a good week of treatment, at least. Poultices of baking soda and water are very soothing, too.

I often got it between my fingers. Frankly it was kind of fun popping those blisters. Not something I’d recommend. But a lot of damn fun.

12

Wow. My sympathies to everyone in this thread. It’s stories like yours that remind me why I prefer to live in a desert. I can happily say I have never gotten near poison ivy or oak or sumac. I’ve had more than my fair share of encounters with cacti and yucca, though.

13

We had a gal in our department that was always out of breath, so much so that she really couldn’t help us do anything physical when we went on field trips, etc. Turns out when she was younger she inhaled a bunch of smoke in a brushfire that included smouldering poison ivy. Her lung capacity, after the scarring, was about 30% of it’s original.

14

Ugh Hama, posion ivy is indeed teh suck. Back when I did archaeology, it was the bane of our existance in the field. The roots on that plant can stretch for MILES (ok I exaggerate but…) and you wouldn’t even realize you were near it, only to end up covered in it the next day. Ick ick.

I second the TecNu soap by Oak n’ Ivy as well. Works well, IF you know you’ve been exposed.

15

After having no success with the usual remedies, my dad cured his poison ivy in about 20 minutes.

He used a bottle of Tequila, a wire brush and a bowl of bleach. I can’t actually say that I recommend this, but I suppose if you get desperate…

16

This might not be what you mean, but poison ivy does not spread, once it’s been washed wth soap.

If you wash the oil (urushiol, produced in every part of the plant) off within an hour or so of exposure, chances are you’ll be fine. You need not band-aid or use astringents.

The rash you see is a delayed allergic reaction. The urushiol is long gone by the time a rash develops, so it is not possible to spread the rash by scratching it.

Now, here’s the tricky-dicky part. The incubation time for a reaction to urushiol is anywhere from a few hours to three weeks. Just to add insult to injury, just because one place on your body breaks out does not mean that another part (even another part immediately adjacent to the first rash) can’t break out from the same exposure a week later. It’s this peculiarity which accounts for the myth of spreading a rash by scratching (it should be noted that scratching may infect a rash, and that infection can spread, thereby expanding the rash, but a reaction only to poison ivy oil does NOT spread.)

Now, urushiol is a devilishly pernicious chemical. Incredibly effective chemical defense. ANY exposure in any form can potentially trigger a reaction. If you handle dead vines, or even compost with the remains of poison ivy in it, you can get a reaction. If you burn it and walk through the smoke, you can get a reaction (I would not recommend breathing the smoke, by the way. People have died from the acute lung inflammation which can result.) Hell, if you stand under it during a rainstorm, and a drop of rainwater falls on a leaf, then rolls off onto you, you can get a reaction.

What’s even worse is that no one really understands the mechanics of the reaction. People may go their entire lives being utterly immune to it, and suddenly develop a severe reaction. Others may be deadly allergic to it, but sometimes inexplicably not react to an exposure. What appears to be clear, however, is that if you are consistently mildly reactive to it, as most of us are, urushiol acts in much the same way as snake venom, in that repeated exposures does NOT confer immunity, but rather the opposite. Each subsequent reaction will most likely end up worse than the previous one.

Good ol’ Toxicodendron radicans. Fascinating, miserable bastard of a plant.

17

A few years ago I was stretching against a tree after a run with a friend. (Diagram THAT, bizzles.) He warned me that the tree had some poison ivy growing on it, and I bragged about my immunity to it. To show my contempt I picked a leaf and rubbed it on my chest.

Let’s just say…well, let’s just say I got poison ivy. 'Cause I did.

18

Oh yeah, and now I am scared to eat mangos because who knows if I am sensitive enough to suddenly get poison ivy of the digestive tract.

19

I didn’t know Central Pennsylvania had a desert!

But you know, even your desert would necessitate my aloe, for me… I’d burn.

20

Ugh - sorry to hear about your poison! This is why my husband has to do all the “weeding.”

I just learned from watching “Ask This Old House,” of all damn things, that the dead stems of poison ivy vines can cause a reaction for up to a year after the leaves itself have been killed. So, when you do further cleanup in the backyard, make sure you cover up completely. They recommend wearing long pants, long sleeves, and gardening gloves.

Personally, I recommend hiring the punk-ass kid down the street with the trampoline and the pennywhistle and the insomia, but that’s just me.