poison ivy
by danny bernstein

"While you’re sleeping, Poison Ivy comes a creeping..."

Right now, I am a walking example for the value of staying home on the couch with a book and not risking going into the woods; I have poison ivy—again.

A little on my arm, a large ugly patch on the front of my right thigh and a bigger, troublesome area on the back of my left leg above and below the knee. It makes it hard to sit down and impossible to cross my legs. Until yesterday, yellow pus was oozing down my leg into my socks. If I wore pants, I would look like I was incontinent but I am in shorts in the hope that it will dry up quicker.

I feel like I have leprosy and the camp song, “Leprosy is crawling all over me” keeps running through my mind. It’s to the tune of Jealousy.
“There goes my chin into your gin.”

The big red scabs look like burns even though I have not scratched. I try to hide my condition from my husband, Lenny, because I know what he is going to say, “I keep telling you to wear long pants in the woods.” So much for sympathy.

I have had poison ivy at least once a year ever since I can remember. Most times, I get it by April, before I realize that winter is over and that I must be careful. I know what the enemy looks like.

“Leaves of three, let it be”.

But in the Southern Mountains, poison ivy is everywhere; it seems stronger, greener, and more insidious than in the North. It enjoys the same advantages of mild climate and constant moisture as other plants. The rhododendron and mountain laurel are healthier and pervasive in Appalachia and so is the poison ivy.

There are more warnings and myths about poison ivy than about AIDS.

You can get it from others.

You can spread it on yourself with hot water, your hands or a washcloth.

The poison ivy oils can last on clothes and shoes for over five years. Watch out for pets.

Park personnel spray all their exposed skin with deodorant.

I am sitting on a towel because my skin is oozing. If I was oozing pus from any other place on my body, I would be in the hospital on an IV, but it is just poison ivy. I go on with my day trying to ignore it but it is not getting any better. My cortisone cream, only one percent cortisone, doesn’t help.

Every day, like a drug addict, I find a new pharmacy in town, and ask, “What is the strongest over-the-counter stuff you can recommend?” and turn and show them my worst spots. I buy each product expecting a miracle cure overnight. When it only gets worse, I go to the next pharmacy.

I am back from a day hike and now my left leg with the nastiest patch is stiff and swollen and I am limping. I am grounded in the height of the summer and have plenty of time to feel sorry for myself. All my self-help treatments and tips from medical websites have not helped. I give up; it’s time to see a doctor. He prescribes steroids. Just the name worries me but I feel too beaten to argue.

“It’s the conventional treatment, I assume.” I say. “What are the side effects?”

“You’re only going to take it for six days in decreasing doses so don’t worry about it. It will be out of your system before your body knows about it”, he says. “I could have called the prescription in to your pharmacy.”

“You mean I didn’t have to come in?” I ask.

“No. But over the phone, you probably would have been less willing to take the pills”, he says. He’s right.

On my way to the pharmacy, I feel an itch on my torso, the fleshy part above the navel. I feel around under my t-shirt. My poison ivy has not spread there; those are chigger bites, microscopic mite larvae—another Southern enemy. I never heard of chiggers up North but the first summer I was here, I was puzzled by the itching around my waist and underarms and thought I had somehow contracted bedbugs. I asked around and raised my t-shirt to every woman I knew in the YMCA locker room.

“What do you think that is?” I kept asking and “chiggers” was the answer. I double-checked with the pharmacist who sold me something that smelled like clear nail polish.
I am only in the middle of the second day’s dosage but the steroids are working like magic. The swelling on my leg has gone down substantially. I am still limping because the skin is badly cracked above and below the back of the knees. Another couple of days and I should be able to be back on the trail.

New lines from the camp song keep popping up:
“Leprosy is crawling all over me.Kiss me quick; there goes my upper lip.”

Danny Bernstein is researching and writing a book on hiking all the places in the book, Cold Mountain.
[ danny@hikertohiker.org ]