Have you heard the saying, “no good deed goes unpunished?” Or, “kindness brings its own punishment,” credited in 1927 to Marie Belloc Lowndes? And in 1938 Leo Pavia gets credit for “Every good deed brings its own punishment.” Well, however you say it, I have a case in point.
I was performing a good deed for a beloved family member. It was my idea to clear her pine grove of long overgrown weeds, shrubs planted by squirrels or birds or the wind, and vines, some of which had grown up the pine trees, toward the light of day. I aimed to have it looking “park-like” for her.
After one long day, and then another, before the sunset on day two, a familiar rash began to appear in earnest up my forearms and around my ankles, oh my! Just the day before I said to my companion in crime, “Does this look like poison ivy to you?” Don’t we have a way of dismissing some of those impressions that we kind of knew in the back of our minds, were relevant and that we should have heeded?
Have you ever done something dumb, foolish, or heedless, and said to yourself just after you did it, “I know better than that!” Oh, to turn back the clock and listen to your own sense.
That’s me, and poison ivy. We have a hate, hate relationship. Why do I get it every year? I know better than that. Poison ivy, oak, or sumac are best prevented than treated. I know that too.
I’m of a certain age, and I know better than this; and I’ve known it for quite some years. I declare every year that I will wear long sleeves and long pants when excavating weeds and overgrown areas of our own property or that of family. But when summer comes around and the temperature heads toward 90 degrees my plans seem to vanish into vapor, very warm vapor.
I like cleaning up those overgrown outdoor forgotten places. It gives me a warm and cuddly sense of satisfaction. But, thinking of “no good deed goes unpunished,” I got instead, a crawling, and oozing sense of foreboding around day three.
I’m aware that my skin is sensitive to plant oils, even green bean plants send me right to the shower or I feel eaten alive. So, one could expect that exposure to known poisonous plant matter would inspire allergic fallout, right?
The ER doc said, “I’ll admit, you’ve got an impressive case.” That was on day six, when after a cool bath in soothing soft soap, the oozing, blisters and spreading gunk had become too much for the buckets of calamine lotion, alcohol, and hydrocortisone cream to affect. I even tried applying dastardly smelling cider vinegar, to no avail. At wits end, and bordering on tears, I needed professional help; even if they could only say “there, there, you simpleton.”
Now, all you young kids out there, “do what I say, not what I do;” and know that “prevention is better than cure,” especially when it comes to poison ivy. Even with the compassion and the medicines from medical professionals, it feels like forever to heal from a bad reaction to poisonous plants. At least three weeks….
The 1959 Coasters song, Poison Ivy, compares its titled, itchy malady, to measles, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, all of the diseases of the time yet to be vaccinated away, and the common cold. “She comes on like a rose but everybody knows…She’s pretty as a daisy but look out man she’s crazy…Late at night while you’re sleepin’, Poison Ivy comes a creepin’ around…She’ll really do you in…You’re gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion…”
My case was the muscle car of cases that skipped the itch and went straight from touching the plant to a myriad of blisters that burst on their own, procreating in multiples, alongside indistinguishable clusters of sores. A little itchy rash this was not.
You know, we often don’t appreciate those body parts that most of us possess until they’re inoperable for some reason. Then wowzah, we value how much they do for us, in their covert mechanization’s.
I’m talking about my arms, specifically my forearms. What to do with my arms? Covered with blisters, I had held them, using my now quite muscled traps, in an inverted U, not a jazz dance move by the way, until a familiar burning sensation took over my shoulders and I had to find a new position.
There is an expanse of happy functioning skin on the top outside of each arm. I’ve tried every possible use of that clean skin but those positions just don’t fit into my repertoire.
Years ago, I heard something quasi-medical that one shouldn’t sleep with one’s arms over your head, that it adds stress to the heart. True or not, I trained myself to avoid that sleeping position. So, now it’s hard to get comfortable like that.
So, wet/dry dressings helped post ER night one, but again I’m not so comfortable with wet, aside from showers, pools, and places where wet is a clear requirement. From humidity, to rain, to being splashed, dunked, dampened, or squirted on, I’m not terribly keen.
My spouse happily banished me to the guest room to cope with what we’ve come to lovingly label “our very own Bev-Ebola.” This is the closest thing we could think of to call the nasty blistery, red rash clusters, outside of a fictitious name from a movie, called Contagion, Outbreak, Pandemic or some-such horror film, by the way.
My next strategy for sleeping was to bathe in calamine lotion, let it dry well and slip into bed, or better described as a senior-leap as far to the middle of the bed with a soft mattress, as I could without the assist of arms. If you’re laughing too hard right now, try scooching onto a soft mattress without the assist of your arms. I wrapped a clean hand towel gently over my arms so as not to brush them accidentally.
Don’t get poison ivy, my friends. “Do as I say, not as I do.”