Matters Horticultural
Three weekends ago, I pulled a lot of weeds from the thin little strip of land that lies between the back wall of our house and the fence that separates us from an equally thin strip of land abutting the back wall of my neighbor's house. This is a job I do two or three times a summer to make sure we can easily get out that back door and to ensure that we can get to the air conditioner unit. The rest of the time the weeds are allowed to run riot, as I haven't yet put in the effort to lay down gravel or otherwise slow their growth and nobody can see that area anyway.
I may have to change that approach in the future, because for the first time pulling weeds had a consequence beyond getting hot, sweaty and tired. About five days after the yard work in question, I realized that my left forearm was bleeding from me scratching a new rash. Simultaneously, a smaller rash appeared just under my knees on the back of both of my legs, and then much smaller patches showed up on the rest of my left arm and on a few places on my right arm.
The night before the rashes turned up, M and I had taken Birdie to Sandy Ridge, so I initially thought the patches on the backs of my legs were really bad bug bites. This explanation made no sense for my arm though, as I'd worn long sleeves outside. To complicate matters, M thought that the two rashes on my legs looked vaguely like ringworm, which made even less sense since I haven't been to the gym since the start of the pandemic. M also was rock solid positive that the forearm at least was poison ivy, but it had been five days since I done any yard work or touched any plant (Sandy Ridge has a nice wide gravel trail), so that didn't seem to make sense.
Clearly, this meant bringing out the big guns. Anti-itch cream, calamine lotion, and just in case M was correct about the ringworm, some anti-fungals on the leg rash. These provided some relief. I also put some of Birdie's diaper rash preventative on a few places to protect them from moisture.
I made it through a weekend and went to the health clinic at my office two Mondays ago (side note: times I've been to work for the health clinic since the start of the pandemic: 4. times I've been there to work: 0.). The nurse practitioner confirmed that it was indeed poison ivy on my arm and everywhere else on my body. She guessed that I'd actually touched the poison ivy on arm given how bad it was there, and that the rest of it was sympathetic reactions. I was prescribed prednisone and zyrtec. After a few days of that I was able to discontinue most of the lotions, and while I still have a few scabs on my arm and am still working through the prednisone prescription, I'm basically fine. Thankfully, that's my worst health mishap in quite some time.
As to the delay, apparently once you've encountered poison ivy it can take up to a week before your body reacts to it, which is a detail I somehow don't recall learning in Boy Scouts. This delayed reaction can apparently also be true of bee stings, so suddenly the fact that I've never been stung by a bee seems a lot more ominous. Thankfully hornet stings did nothing to me and apparently nothing to my father either based on his own yard work adventures yesterday.
I've pulled weeds in that back area two or three times a year since I moved into this house in 2007, and I've never encountered poison ivy before. There has always been a small ivy that I pull up all the time (it's all around my house), but otherwise it's just standard weeds. I'll have to be more careful next time around, or it's time to make it a lot less hospitable for weeds by laying down plastic and gravel or something.
You could have been forgiven for guessing that my family was immune to poison ivy anyway. In a fun piece of family lore, shortly after my father's family moved from Brooklyn to the New York city suburbs, my grandfather encountered a very pretty plant. He liked it so much that he transplanted some from the woods around the entrance to their porch. Some time later one of his friends asked him why he had poison ivy growing around his porch! My father was very young then, so it's unclear in his memory whether my grandfather was immune to it, or just never noticed a connection to the pretty plant and a skin rash.
I may have to change that approach in the future, because for the first time pulling weeds had a consequence beyond getting hot, sweaty and tired. About five days after the yard work in question, I realized that my left forearm was bleeding from me scratching a new rash. Simultaneously, a smaller rash appeared just under my knees on the back of both of my legs, and then much smaller patches showed up on the rest of my left arm and on a few places on my right arm.
The night before the rashes turned up, M and I had taken Birdie to Sandy Ridge, so I initially thought the patches on the backs of my legs were really bad bug bites. This explanation made no sense for my arm though, as I'd worn long sleeves outside. To complicate matters, M thought that the two rashes on my legs looked vaguely like ringworm, which made even less sense since I haven't been to the gym since the start of the pandemic. M also was rock solid positive that the forearm at least was poison ivy, but it had been five days since I done any yard work or touched any plant (Sandy Ridge has a nice wide gravel trail), so that didn't seem to make sense.
Clearly, this meant bringing out the big guns. Anti-itch cream, calamine lotion, and just in case M was correct about the ringworm, some anti-fungals on the leg rash. These provided some relief. I also put some of Birdie's diaper rash preventative on a few places to protect them from moisture.
I made it through a weekend and went to the health clinic at my office two Mondays ago (side note: times I've been to work for the health clinic since the start of the pandemic: 4. times I've been there to work: 0.). The nurse practitioner confirmed that it was indeed poison ivy on my arm and everywhere else on my body. She guessed that I'd actually touched the poison ivy on arm given how bad it was there, and that the rest of it was sympathetic reactions. I was prescribed prednisone and zyrtec. After a few days of that I was able to discontinue most of the lotions, and while I still have a few scabs on my arm and am still working through the prednisone prescription, I'm basically fine. Thankfully, that's my worst health mishap in quite some time.
As to the delay, apparently once you've encountered poison ivy it can take up to a week before your body reacts to it, which is a detail I somehow don't recall learning in Boy Scouts. This delayed reaction can apparently also be true of bee stings, so suddenly the fact that I've never been stung by a bee seems a lot more ominous. Thankfully hornet stings did nothing to me and apparently nothing to my father either based on his own yard work adventures yesterday.
I've pulled weeds in that back area two or three times a year since I moved into this house in 2007, and I've never encountered poison ivy before. There has always been a small ivy that I pull up all the time (it's all around my house), but otherwise it's just standard weeds. I'll have to be more careful next time around, or it's time to make it a lot less hospitable for weeds by laying down plastic and gravel or something.
You could have been forgiven for guessing that my family was immune to poison ivy anyway. In a fun piece of family lore, shortly after my father's family moved from Brooklyn to the New York city suburbs, my grandfather encountered a very pretty plant. He liked it so much that he transplanted some from the woods around the entrance to their porch. Some time later one of his friends asked him why he had poison ivy growing around his porch! My father was very young then, so it's unclear in his memory whether my grandfather was immune to it, or just never noticed a connection to the pretty plant and a skin rash.