For the past few days I have been incredibly irritable, cranky, sullen, aggravated & sleep-deprived. No, I don’t have a newborn baby that I must care for, instead my body decided to birth the mother of all rashes all over my skin parts. That’s right… I’ve got it:
Poison Ivy.
And it’s EV-ERY-WHERE.
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I want to die.
-No. That’s not quite it.
I want to kill myself.
-Hmmm… close, but still, that sentiment isn’t totally fitting.
Ok, got it…
I want the rip the flesh from my body, soak it in acid & bleach, scald it in boiling water, pass it through an industrial strength blow dryer and have it re-attached all while I am under heavy sedation so I can catch up on the COUNTLESS hours I’ve not slept ever since Mount St. Hellish erupted all over my oh-so sensitive limbs.
What probably sucks more than the itching and discomfort and lack of sleep at night is the fact that I have no one but myself to blame for this debacle.
Am I unreasonably susceptible to toxic weeds with poison oils? Why yes, yes, I am.
Have I, in the past, contracted said poison oils simply by washing the clothes of another who came in contact with the plant, although I had not? Damn right I have.
As a child, did I come down with multiple horrific cases of ivy poisoning during summer months, so so SO so bad that I once got it inside my eye, causing my lid to swell to the approximate size of a golf ball, forcing me to spend the following days trying to slide a thin layer of tissue between my swollen lids to collect my miserable, unjustly afflicted, childhood tears? This scenario, sadly, is also all too true.
So then why, when warned of poison leaves in the area, did I not flee? Why did I not wave my middle finger in the general direction of my offenders instead of waving the wand of a weed-killing spray in their face. That same blasted wand that literally managed to blast the irritating oils of its plant host back onto my body and clothing?
Because I am an idiot and an asshole.
At least that’s all I’ve been able to come up with.
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Do you want to know an interesting fact that I read about poisonous plants? One of the WORST things you can do is to spray them with weed-killer for the exact reason I mentioned above. It causes teeny-tiny offensive poison particles to become airborne, and for those of us with extreme cases of what I like to call “new-born dermatitis” (Do you get hives from moderate alcohol consumption while sitting in the sun? What about from applying certain types of sun block mixed with chlorinated pool water? Then this is you and your life if screwed…) you are risking not only spraying vicious oils all over your skin but you may also end up ingesting them, thus causing a shit storm of shit you do not want to deal with. Trust.
The worst thing about this particular instance is the fact that I didn’t even know I had poison ivy until about 3 days after it first reared its ugly pimpled head. It wasn’t until I awoke one night last week attempting to saw off my own leg with my ragged fingernails that I realized that what I assumed were above average sized mosquito bites were in fact, much much worse.
The next day I noticed a rash had begun to form and spread and those once large circular “mosquito bite” sized blobs on my legs had begun to transform themselves into things that looked more like red sand tropical islands rather than innocuous rosy-red orbs.
It wasn’t until this past Friday night (mind you I contracted the “sickness” on the previous Sunday afternoon) that I realized I had not only entered my home that Sunday, while covered in the offending oil, sat on the couch (which seconds as our bed), touched numerous household items and the cat, before I realized that I was also sleeping on the same sheets since that day. The same sheets that I’d been rolling around in for the entire week wondering why this shit was spreading all over my body like wildfire.
Needless to say… it was too late. A week since I first noticed the rash I am still accumulating new patches of discomfort. I have washed my sheets & any and all associated materials I may or may not have (can’t risk it) touched since the incident twice over now and I am on my way to get a shot of steroids from my doctor because I have left myself with no other options.
The bee and I have barely said a word to each other in days, mostly due to the fact that my emotional range is either that of a crazed, hypersensitive crying lunatic, weeping at the sign of a new blister or bump or that of an aloof, angry madwoman whose main purpose in life is now to eradicate all toxins from my living space.
*****
I’ve seen a doctor, received a shot of cortisone in my arm and am currently taking steroids despite the fact that I was always told they give men breasts and women mustaches. This was a risk I was mostly willing to take and since I already have both breasts and a mustache. I think I can say I’ve won this round.
*****
It is now a day after the doctor and the welts have begun to subside but more than that my state of mind is slightly more balanced than it had been. To put things into perspective I have included photographic evidence from the day I first noticed the bumps arise:
I sent this photo in a text to the bee with the light-hearted comment that my “bug bites” resembled two giant nipples. HAHAHA!
That joke proved even less funny after my leg started to look like this:
if possible, please try to ignore the unshaven-ness of my leg. it’s kind of hard to drag a razor over your skin when your legs are covered in festering sores.
In short…
Happy 4th! Stay safe, have fun, and stay the fuck inside.
me and the bee 