When God was fiddling around in the Garden of Eden, making daises, roses, and other flowery things, the Devil was working on his own devious plant: Poison Ivy. Take a look at that innocent looking vine in the picture above. It’s so lush and leafy green. It could be a postcard for the wonders of Mother Nature. Instead, those two trees are being choked by a plant that guards the portal to Hell.
My trip to the Netherworld started simply enough a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting my folks up in Pennsylvania. The weather was dry and crisp in a northeastern late spring kind of way. The feels like temperature won’t get as low here in Tampa until Halloween. Wanting to enjoy some outside time before heading back home to the swamplands, I did some weeding in my Mom’s garden around the house. Some of the weeds were innocuous looking vines that in retrospect I’m guessing had the three telltale leaves. I wasn’t really paying attention. It was a beautiful day in a lovely setting. What could possibly go wrong?
The first itching started a couple of days later. A couple of rashes on my left hand and wrist. Annoying, but nothing worse than the fire ant bites we Floridians are all too familiar with. A day or two later, these rashes turned into raised bumps that leaked a mostly clear fluid. That’s when alarm bells started going off. A quick Google search told me I likely came in contact with poison ivy. Not great, but at least it was localized. I took a trip to Publix to get some calamine lotion then came home and lathered up my left hand and wrist to the color of Pepto-Bismol. I hoped I would soon be on the mend. No such luck.
A rash and bumps started appearing on my right wrist five to six days after my unfortunate foray into the garden. The rash on my left wrist grow to the size of an old Eisenhower Silver Dollar, which the Google tells me is a whopping 1.5 inches in diameter (and makes you wonder why anyone at the US Mint thought the coin was going to catch on). A week after exposure, the itchiness started to surpass chicken pox levels. The oozing was like something out of a Stephen King novel.
Two more trips to the store and another $40 out of pocket got me some other supposed over the counter remedies. They didn’t do squat. The infestation kept on spreading, first up my arms and then on both of my lower legs. I mean, seriously, I pulled a few weeds. How is something like this even possible? This video from the CDC and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) explains it with a disarmingly fun cartoon.
The Cliff’s Notes version is that Poison Ivy contains a substance called urushiol that is released when the plant is bruised. I guess pulling a plant from the Earth’s soil so that it never blights us again counts as bruising. Anyway, when as little as 50 micrograms of urushiol gets on your skin, it can cause an allergic reaction with a severity that depends on how sensitive you are to it. If you have allergies like mine, your body gets confused into thinking this urushiol stuff is something that needs to be attacked, and your immune system goes into full blitzkrieg mode. Collateral damage doesn’t appear to be a consideration. Seems like a failure of evolution to me.
Turns out urushiol causes what’s known as a Type IV Delayed Hypersensitivity Reaction. This means that even ten days after touching the heinous stuff, new breakouts can still happen. Here’s a couple of pictures of what my arms looked like ten days after the last time I ever plan to pull weeds:
This when I finally went to the doctor. In severe cases like mine, the treatment is a regimen of Prednisone, a powerful steroid that basically tells your immune system to chill out and stand down. It seems to be working, though some of the healing patches on my skin look like the early stages of leprosy or something out of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. It’s still better than the itchy, oozing, artificially pink alternative of a week ago.
So, well played Mother Nature. Thanks for the reminder that you are really in charge on this planet. Next time I am brave enough to go outside, I’ll be sure to pay heed to the rhyme I should have remembered from my childhood, “Leaves of three, let them be.”
As for poison ivy, I give it the worst rating I possibly can, ten poison death heads:
