Tuesday, February 12, 2013

If You Could See Me Now...

The poison ivy debacle
continues, and I'm an unhappy camper.
Yesterday morning, I got a steroid shot,
and by last night, some of the whelps 
had gone down.
But the itching, the scratching continues.
I wake up at night clawing at myself.

For someone who never 
took poison ivy seriously before,
I've gained a new respect fear
for this venomous, virulent, vicious, 
noxious, pernicious, malignant plant.

While I'd planned to keep our garden
as organic as possible,
my new battle cry is death to poison ivy
by any means possible.

Of course, the problem is that I encountered it
along the tree line that needs further
cleaning out on both sides of the creek,
not in the garden area.

And, yes, I did venture up to the
old house place on the sandy hill
to dig jonquils and iris for transplanting.

Oh, and the treks into the woods
because I wanted to follow another creek.

What's a girl gonna' do?

Stay out of the woods?
Don't think so.

But if it happens again?
I might give it some serious consideration.

4 comments:

  1. Ouch!! You'll need to wear hazmat garb if you go into the woods again. And the thing with organic gardening -- years ago I had an organic flower farm and attracted every single beetle and bug for miles around because I wasn't spraying toxins to eliminate them. Damn!

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  2. Just don't try burning the plant to get rid of it - you can seriously hurt yourself inhaling the smoke from burning poison ivy. You can also get a rash on your skin from the smoke as well as a rash internally from breathing it.

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  3. Hoping the steroid injection will bring you the relief you need. I can only imagine the discomfort you are experiencing.

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  4. Hurry to the drug store and buy Technu brand poison ivy scrub. You bathe in cool water and scrub the oils off your skin--takes a whole minute but it feels good to scrub. Every day, 3-4 times. That will help to keep it from spreading and relieves the itching some. There's also a poison ivy itch relief ointment that works fairly well. I use both: scrub, pat dry gently, then apply the ointment. Other than those OTC meds, steroids are the only thing. Hope you get better really soon! I know you're miserable.

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Good to hear from you!