Scratching Post

Urushiol Oil is a substance greatly mis-understood by the general populace. One can most commonly find it on plants like Poison Oak, Poison Ivy, and Poison Sumac. These plants, however, are not actually poisonous in the traditional sense. The skin rash associated with touching them is nothing more than an allergic reaction, and if you were to eat some, you probably would not get sick. However... as I sit here writing this post while swathed from head to toe in Benedryl cream, scratching at my skin with a ferocity usually reserved for melee combat in a war scenario... saying that it is nothing more than an allergic reaction is a lot like saying that Hurricane Katrina was nothing more than a weather incident.

I first noticed the Poison Oak growing on my property about 4 weeks ago, but it wasn't really until the week before last that I decided I should do something about it. I've had a run in with Poison Oak once before, but I'd had no idea at the time what had caused the rash on my arms. A doctor was similiarly stumped, since it hadn't correlated to a run through the underbrush. Remind me never to go back to that doctor - I apparently have a 1 week delay between contact and outbreak. Most people react within 24-48 hours, but there you have it. So this time around, I knew what to expect. Or so I thought.

My anti-poison oak gear consisted of a long sleeve shirt, a pair of jeans, gloves, old shoes, and a pair of safety glasses. Next time I will purchase a hazmat suit because this was completely inadequate. I managed to catch my wrists several times, and caught a branch across the face during my mission of destruction.

Here is where things went from bad to worse.

Upon finishing the cleanup of the offending plant (more like a tree), I decided that a vigorous scrub down was in order. So I jumped into the shower and took soap and washcloth and rubbed my wrists and face raw. This, I only learned later, was absolutely the worst thing I could have done. Urushiol binds to the skin in as little as 5 minutes but can take up to 2 hours. The piping hot water melted the oil and opened up all the pores on my body at the same time. One of my co-workers said "Like a pad of butter on a freshly toasted english muffin", and it is an apt analogy. Blissfully ignorant of the damage I had just done to myself, I continued with my other weekend chores.

About 5 or 6 days later, the tell tale bumps arrived. They itched, but not too bad. "Oh well, I guess the shower didn't work," I thought to myself, "Or maybe it won't be as bad as before." Har har har. Three days later, my wrists looked like something out of a zombie movie, and the basic rash had spread to nearly my entire body. It was no coincidence that the rash followed the exact lines that water runs down me in the shower. Try following that line of water on yourself, sometime, and you'll know why me-so-miserable.

So as I stocked up on creams and tried not to scratch, I decided to educate myself about the source of my new affliction. This is where I learned about all the misinformation about poison oak and its brethren. Firstly and most importantly, it's not contagious. The oil can be spread from surface to surface, but once it has bonded to your skin, it's harmless to everyone but you. Secondly, the rash does not spread. People complaining of later outbreaks are either re-infecting themselves with the oil, or are suffering from some secondary auto-immune body response (your body is so hopped up on itchy rash, that it starts popping up hives on other parts of your body simply because the system is overloaded and freaking out), or else they have scratched so much that they've caused an infection. There is no such thing as a "systemic reaction" since the oil never reaches your bloodstream (inhaling smoke from burning poison oak is a dangerous exception that could kill you). And finally, as an observation made by me after finding several reputable websites with wildly conflicting information,... most everything else is probably bunk. I swear I could not find an authoritative source of information that agreed 100% with anyone else. You'd think that with 85% of Americans allergic to the stuff, that someone would have done a comprehensive study by now.

So... here I sit... in agony. The word "itchy" does not accurately describe what poison oak does to you. An itch is an errant tickle on the surface of the skin. A quick scrubbing of the area with your nails alleviates it. Not so with the poison oak. The sensation starts out like an itch, and builds to a desperate and defeaning noise of nerve endings all screaming the same word at the top of their lungs. It's not a word in the English language, it is a word that only the neurons in your brain can understand. But loosely translated, the word means: "SCRATCHMESCRATCHMEOHGODSCRATCHME FORTHELOVEOFALLTHAT'SHOLYANDUNHOLYFROMNOWUNTIL THEENDOFTIMESCRATCHMESCRATCHMEORIWILLKILLYOU!!!!" This word is shouted thousands of times per second. And let me tell you, there is no conscious will that can resist that call. I scratch and scratch until my skin is raw. I try to make the pain from scratching override the itch. It's a preferable sensation, even though it only lasts a few seconds. I think that poison oak could probably replace the current unacceptable forms of interrogation and torture that you read so much about in the news these days. Just brush the inmate in poison oak, wait a week, then tie their arms to a chair and ask them questions while waving a tube of cream under their nose. Good god I'd talk!

I'm ready to talk now!

EPILOGUE: Nearly three weeks after I wrote this post... and less than a week after the last of the rash cleared up... I have gotten poison oak again. Did I romp through the underbrush? No. Did I even step off of pavement in the last three weeks? Not that I can recall. This is why someone would be hard pressed to believe me when I said there is no such thing as a systemic reaction or that the rash doesn't spread. But after giving the matter much frustrated consideration, I highly suspect that what happened is that washing the clothes I wore during the poison oak clearing was simply not enough. The oil persisted through detergent, hot water, and a full dry cycle. And so by wearing the pants again, I re-exposed myself. Oh yay, me so happy. I'm debating whether to wash the shirt and pants again, or to burn them. If I burn them, though, I'd better be careful not to inhale the smoke. Sheesh!