Poison Ivy

[triplemultiplex]

Ever get into some poison ivy?  Sucks don't it?
Supposedly there's a small percentage of the population born with a horseshoe up their bum who are immune to it.  Been jealous of them this week.
Last weekend I tripped on some vine and landed on a patch.  Now my right flank looks like Swedish Fish (because of course I was wearing shorts!).

Makes me think of how crappy a defense mechanism the irritant in poison ivy is.  It doesn't affect the creature who stomped it right away; it takes many hours to start in.  By then, the hapless mammal who blundered into it has moved far on and has very little way to correlate the irritant with that particular plant unless they're intelligent like a human.  Maybe the effect is more instant if you try to eat it?  Maybe it's less of a problem if one is completely covered in fur.

Well regardless, share your unfortunate encounters with itchy, scratchy, obnoxious plants in this thread.  And see if you can resist scratching somewhere on your person when reading the thread.

[JayhawkCO]

Never been bothered by any of the three poison pals.  Not sure if I'm immune, but I've done enough hiking that you would assume I would have encountered them at some point.

Chris

[Max Rockatansky]

I've never had much of a reaction to anything in the Poison family.  I had some minor itching for a couple hours when I was exposed to Poison Ivy when I was seven but it didn't develop into a full blown rash.  A lot of the trails I hike and run on have Poison Oak strewn about them, never seemed to cause me an issue upon accidental contact.

[hbelkins]

My dad could roll around naked in the stuff and it wouldn't bother him at all. That trait didn't get passed down to me. I inherited his tendency to sweat, not his immunity to poison ivy.

My wife can just think about it and she breaks out, often to the point of needing medical intervention (oral steroids and a prescription cream.)

[roadman65]

Also to note, dogs and cats are immune from it, but pet your four legged member after they've been exposed and you will get as if you touched the stuff directly.

[Rothman]

My reaction is intermittent.  Sometimes I get a rash and sometimes I don't.  Maybe some leaves just didn't have that much toxin on them or something.  Still, I avoid the stuff, so I haven't had an encounter in decades.

[plain]

I had no reaction to it but my girlfriend at the time did. She pretty much cussed me out the rest of the week.

[1995hoo]

I never reacted to poison ivy when I was growing up, but I have no desire to test it out to see whether that's still the case. My mom gets a very severe reaction, and occasionally there is poison ivy in the flowerbeds in her yard, so she has to wear long pants and long sleeves if she works in the yard (no matter how hot it is) and she has to tuck the long sleeves into her gardening gloves to make sure the sleeves don't slide up by accident. I have no idea whether that sort of allergy might be genetic, so I just make it a point to avoid the stuff.

The worst poison ivy incident I recall was one year at Goshen Scout Camps (Camp Olmsted, to be specific): One of the new kids in our troop thought the pit toilet latrine was disgusting, but he really had to take a crap, so he went out in the woods and sat over a log and used some leaves to wipe.....you guessed it, the leaves were poison ivy, and he got a very bad reaction in a very bad place.

[Roadgeekteen]

Never gotten it thankfully. I don't like touching plants in general so that helps.

[triplemultiplex]

Never gotten it thankfully. I don't like touching plants in general so that helps.

No salads for this guy.

[Roadgeekteen]

Never gotten it thankfully. I don't like touching plants in general so that helps.

No salads for this guy.

I eat vegetables I just don't like touching plants growing in the wild.

[renegade]

Probably a good call.

[Rothman]

Probably a good call.

Lots of pleasant plants in the wild:  Impatiens, which usually grows near poison ivy, can lessen the latter's effects (drip fluid from the main stem onto the affected area).

Of course, aloe vera's out there too and lots of good stuff to eat...

[ilpt4u]

As a kid, I could grab it, play with it, do whatever - completely unaffected

Into my 20s and on, I developed the allergy at some point, and have had some nasty outbreaks after contact

I tried the "redneck"  treatment after one particularly bad event, because nothing else worked...yeah it was painful, but it cured it within 36 hours. The "redneck"  treatment invovled Steel Wool and Bleach...it sucks, but it works, and the ivy rash was so painful at that point I was willing to try it