There’s a thread in IMHO sentances never before spoken. I think “Cock-chugging poison ivy” would be a good candidate.
neuroman: Calamine lotion IS crap. Caladryl is pretty good because it contains an antihistamine which helps with the itching…but why did they still have to make it that nasty pink shit?
I concur, as long as we’re still talking figuratively. 'Cause…shudder
AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Ogre: That was fascinating. You just taught me more about poison ivy than I’ve known my whole life - and I used to spend every summer at my grandparents’ place on 160 acres of woods near Natural Bridge, VA. Thank you!
Mother pus bucket. That means there’s no fucking way I’m doing any yard cleanup if it’s above 70 outside. Bleah.
I concur … i had an 85% case of it when I was 12 years old…it popped out randomly, a patch would clear up and repop a week or so later. Living hell, I did 3 or 4 ocnsecutive cortisone pill countdowns over the 5 months it took to finally whip it all the way. What saved my poor little mind from some kind of insanity from the itching was Burroughs Solution/Domeboro. First, last and only case of it I ever had. I can pee in a patch of it and not get anything from it now [found out by breaking down and deciding to take a whiz while waiting for the wrecker to tow me home and when driving by my impropmtu toilet a week later noticing the florishingly huge patch i had dropped trou in - yikes!]
Mr Aru can look at a picture in a book and get it=\ He swears by domeboro, burt’s bees poison ivy soap and dr bronners tea tree liquid soap. On the amusing side, he went to a medieval recreationist event one time as a leper because navy doctor had given him calamine lotion to use, and between the residue, the suppurating oozing rash and the decorative gauze bandaging, he looked totally leperous. Made 34 cents in his begging bowl=)
When I was 7, I played in some bushes that had poison ivy growing around them-thought I had been attacked by a bunch of mosquitos or something. ( I had never heard of poison ivy at that age). I kept playing in and around the bushes, eventually developing a rash over 80% of my body by the time we found out what it was and the rashes stopped developing.
My accident-prone uncle* was clearing brush in his yard. He put poison-sumac in a wood-chipper. The oil got in his lungs and nearly killed him, he spent quite some time in the hospital, but it was before I was born so I’m not sure how long.
*He’s also fallen off his roof and gotten his hand caught in a post pounder, among other things.
My pleasure! I’m a veritable fount of botanical trivia. I also work in and around poison ivy (and oak, and sumac, and trumpet creeper, etc) every day doing botanical research, so it pays for me to know its ways. 
I’ve gotten cocky, though. I’ve been so used to not developing contact dermatitis that I suppose I started thinking I was immune to it. Really, I had just been really careful to wash my clothes/tools/body after climbing around in the stuff for hours. I came home a few nights ago and didn’t shower immediately.
Guess who’s got a li’l itchy spot on his brow, riiiiiight where he might inadvertently reach up and wipe sweat off his face with a shirt sleeve. I hope it doesn’t get any worse.
Incidentally, that OAK AND IVY stuff works, but just because it’s an organic solvent that’s miscible with urushiol. Soap and water (or in a pinch, any organic solvent, like alcohol…I’ve even been known to scrub my arms with lighter fluid) will do just as well, provided you use it soon enough after exposure.
There’s also an effective preventative product out…you treat your skin before you go out into the ivy, but I don’t remember the name, as I never use it.
I had a bad scare last year that actually turned out OK. I was climbing the side of a mountain in north Alabama, looking for a certain oft-poached plant that occurs there (not to worry…I’m in conservation, not exploitation. We were mapping locations for population analysis.) Unfortunately, this plant grows in rich mesic woods, in STRONG association with poison ivy. I mean, the whole slope was coated in the crap. I slipped on a wet rock, and went tumbling ass over teakettle through the poison ivy. It whipped across my face, got in my mouth, and actually whipped hard enough across my arms and legs to abrade my skin and leave wet, green streaks of sap in the open wounds. :eek:
In spite of my torn-up knee, I hobbled as fast as I could to the base and jumped into the shower, scrubbing myself raw. I was certain I’d have a systemic reaction, but I managed to get it all.
And man, Natural Bridge is such a gorgeous place. Just a beautiful area of the Apps there.
Good God.
Oh, and one other piece of Toxi rad trivia/advice: If you’re cutting the stuff and moving it, wear thick leather or vinyl gloves. Do not, under any circumstances, use latex or regular rubber dish gloves. Urushiol will penetrate rubber or latex with ease.
I just took my daughter to the doctor yesterday because she’s covered in it. I stuck her in an oatmeal bath last night and then slathered her with hydrocortisone cream. On the bright side, it’s not really bothering her even though she looks like one of those poor kids that was born with an unfortunate birthmark.
Hey Ogre I’ve got 2 questions for ya. Why does poison ivy exist, for one? Does it do any kind of good in the grand scheme of nature.
Also, why are some people immune? (My mom and I both are.)
THIS Poison Ivy? Her friend, Harley, is there too! 
If you’ve got any streams nearby grab yourself some Jewel-weed, crush the leaves and stems and rub them on the areas with the rash.
Works every time for me, usually within a day.
For clarification when it comes to indentification so someone doesn’t grab the right plant (the one in the upper left of my link is poison ivy, NOT Jewelweed)
The leaves look like this , are waxy and water poured one them will almost immediately bead and roll off
The flowers like this
The stems are hollow and, and are where most of the juice that counteracts the poison ivy irritants can be found.
Nice link. That dude HATES poison ivy.
If anyone goes, make sure to check out the slide show. Some of those folks got it so bad its rotting their skin off.
NEVER think you’re protected. My mom once wore gloves and long sleeves to get some up and still got it on her forearms so bad it got infected. She was on damn penicillin for poison ivy.
[I get it between my fingers too. It’s odd but when I get it, it always seems to come up in the same places. what’s going on there? ]
Having had run-ins with poison ivy in the past I can tell you a few things about it.
First the good news. For a lot people the best treatment is heat. A running stream of hot water from the bath faucet is like a miracle cure. What you want to do is get your tap running good and hot – not ridiculously hot, but as hot as you can stand it. Let the water flow over the infected areas for 20 or 30 seconds. You’ll feel an intense sensation much like scratching and after a while that goes away and you’ll just feel the hot water, and you’re done. That treatment will last a good 8 hours. You might try it first on a small area to see if it works for you.
The active ingredient in poison ivy is urushiol oil and it is found on every part of the plant and remains long after the plant has died. Once you come in contact with it, the oil bonds to your skin in 20 minutes or so. After that washing won’t do much good.
There are a couple of fairly new products that seem to help. One is Technu which is used to wash off the oil after contact. They claim it even helps after the rash erupts, but if I understand the poison ivy process correctly I don’t see how. Another product, Ivy Block, is applied prior to doing anything which may bring you into contact with poison ivy. It keeps the urushiol from binding to you skin cells.
Apparently there is no evolutionary advantage to the unpleasant after effects of contact with poison ivy. Animals such as cows and other herbivores which are most likely to feed on the plant are not sensitive to it. Apparently only humans and a few other higher primates are the only species to react.
Its berries provide food for birds and some small animals, and it provides humans with something to bitch about.
Really, though, as a native plant, it does have a place in our ecology.
I have no idea. Some people are. But never, ever assume that this will be true forever. It can change at any time.
The table entitled “Relationships in Nature,” located near the bottom of this page should give you some idea of poison ivy’s ecological place.
Just as hot as you can stand it. Just be careful not to burn yourself.
It will itch like hell for a few seconds then the itch will stop,
About fifteen years ago, Boyfriend and I were out along some country road in Maine, digging up daffodil bulbs from around the cellar holes of long-gone farmhouses. We were drinking beer, so occasionally we’d go piss on a bush. It was early enough in spring that we failed to recognize the poison ivy we were digging in. Cock-chugging indeed…we were two unhappy homos for the next few weeks, I can tell ya.
Debaser, I’ve had my face swell up from it too – what misery! It happened when I was a kid and the next-door neighbor burned a field full of poison ivy. Just awful.
Ogre, why do you put trumpet creeper in with poison ivy, oak, and sumac? Is it that closely related? Are some people allergic to it?
Trumpet creeper is not related to poison ivy, but contact dermatitis from its sap is a pretty common occurrence. Some folks are allergic to it.
You know, the title to this thread would likely be the best-selling Batman comic book of all time.
I always considered myself pretty lucky when it came to poison oak, the West coast’s itchy-scratchy stuff. I ran into a tree covered with the stuff as a kid (actually, I rode my bike into it. I didn’t have much sense of balance as a kid.) and earned a bath in the laundry sink with Fells Naptha soap, but I didn’t develop a rash. I didn’t hike much, and I knew what poison oak looked like and how to avoid it, on the off chance I did venture out into the wilderness.
“Hah, hah” said poison oak. “You think you can avoid me as easily as that?” Last year, I lived in an apartment across the street from a large park, and we’re talking the kind with trails here. I’m a cat person who couldn’t have her cats in her apartment, so when I saw a friendly black kitty wandering around, of course I petted it and picked it up and such. Guess where this is going?
A couple days later, I developed some bumps on my hand. I figured that they were flea bites from the cat, or maybe spider bites, scratched at them, and tried to go on with my life. It was odd, though - they were sure lasting a long time for bug bites, and they itched so much, I had to keep some Burt’s Bees salve by the bed for when I woke up scratching. And, didn’t they start out smaller? Yeah, the damn cat gave me poison oak. For a week, I was in absolute hell over a 1-inch patch of itchyness, and just thinking about it now, a year later, makes my hand itch again. I don’t know how I’d stand getting a larger patch of it.