I must have gotten a second exposure to Poison Wood. I have it much worse than before. Both arms are covered. I have it on my waist where I must have stuck my thumbs around my belt to pull my pants up. I have a small patch on my face where I must have scratched my chin with my glove.When I was a child I had extremely bad reactions to poison ivy, which grows almost more than corn in Ohio. I remember summers where I was literally covered head to toe with poison ivy rash. I was trying to think of the last time I had it really bad.
One summer Jim Hughes and I got paid $50.00 to cut down a field of brush. We did this one afternoon with sickles. The next day we were both covered with poison ivy. I think that the doctor's visits to get cortisone shots cost more than we were paid.
Another time, Jim and I worked out this elaborate plan to sneak through the woods in the dark in order to get into the Holiday Drive-In without paying. The next two weeks spent trying not to scratch our poison ivy was not worth the $6 we did not pay.
This week does not even compare. Poison Wood itches sooooo bad. On a scale of 1-10 if poison ivy is an 8, then Poison Wood is a 12. The first two days you have a red rash of small bumps that itch like crazy. Then the rash develops into liquid filled boils for two days. Then the boils pop and turn into a second degree chemical burn. The the burns scab and hurt for another 7 days while they dry. Just as my first exposure began to scab and dry out I got the second exposure. I literally have a Poison Wood rash on top of my Poison Wood boils.
I have been so doped up on Benadryl that it has been hard to write at night. But this has been no excuse not to complete the archaeological survey. I will take consolation in that while beating through the woods getting Poison Wood all over my body, I found two new sites of domestic activity that had never been mapped before on Fort George Cay. These included the now famous "Poison Wood" site, and site X which was found on the second to last day.
We have completed the project and are just cleaning up and packing. I will write a wrap up blog in a couple days and post it here and on the museum blog.
3 comments:
Neal - The $50 field gig was you and me not Jim. The grass was about 5 feet high and towards the end of the day we realized that there was 1 foot of poison ivy through out the entire field. We started itching before we even made it home. There was a girl about our age sitting on her front pourch watching us work most of the day - it was creepy :-)
Poisonwood has the same stuff as poison ivy (oak and sumac) - urushiol.
2 weeks and a hot blow dryer :-(
This blog has become the fourth most read blog on my site because people find it when they search for "poison wood rash."
The poison wood rash I got was really bad. when I was young I got poison ivy and I knew the first rule was not to scratch. what is different about poison wood is that the oil stays on everything. Anything you were wearing during exposure has to be washed. My gloves, baseball hat, and belt did not get washed and my second exposure came from one of these items.
I had the rash for three weeks. The sores did not heel for another three weeks. So total episode was six weeks.
In that time I took Benadryl pills and used a lot of Benadryl lotion.
There is no easy solution. You just have to man up. But DO NOT SCRATCH!
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