Don’t look down, summer gets its revenge in an itchy way
- col-teri-stein
- August 27, 2022
- 649
Sometimes things happen in life that are hard to explain, like how did Joe and I both get a bad case of poison ivy behind the same knee and at the same time? Summer is my favorite season but only when I stay out of poison ivy and away from blood-sucking mosquitoes.
Joe works outside a lot, so he had probably been around poison ivy, but I had not, so I’m blaming one of my cats. The cat loves me so much he probably got into some poison ivy and then rubbed it all over the back of my knee. It’s red, ugly and itchy.
This is where it gets to the life is not fair part. Joe called the doctor earlier in the week and got some pills to get rid of his poison ivy. Finally on Friday when I got up and noticed the poison ivy had spread to about 20 times the area it originally covered, I decided to call the doctor. I had never had to get any prescription medicine for poison ivy before in my life, but this time I was throwing in the towel.
It was probably my leg-shaving habit so I could look decent (I’m not looking good) in shorts that caused the stuff to spread so fast. And at 65 my legs don’t look as nice as they did in junior high school when we rolled the legs of our shorts up high or in high school when the nuns would pull us into the gym to measure our hemlines.
We all passed inspection, but did you know you can roll your skirt up at the waistline to make it shorter? Later that afternoon, everyone’s skirt was a little shorter than it was at that earlier hemline check. It’s amazing the things you learn in school that are so useful in life.
I had it all planned out. I’d get the pills, and I’d also be able to use the Ivy-Dry Super stuff I already had. I’d attack that poison ivy from the inside and the outside, get this stuff gone, and be back to wearing shorts in no time. How many shorts-wearing days could we have left? Probably not many.
There was one problem. I am not a doctor, so I couldn’t prescribe what I wanted for myself, which is probably some kind of breach of ethics anyway. Even though I specifically mentioned Joe had the pills when I called, my doctor went ahead and prescribed me some cortisone-type cream.
What? There went my home medical plan out the window.
Usually when I’m on a new medication, I never look at the side effects unless I think I might be having one. You’ve read them. They are scary, anything from hangnails to death. They leave you wondering why you ever wanted to take that medication in the first place.
But this time I decided to be responsible and look up the side effects of this cream because, really, I didn’t think there would be any side effects. It’s just a cream.
Surprise, this cream could cause burning, itching, irritation, stinging or redness — just what I was trying to get rid of. It can cause acne — not a major improvement over poison ivy. It can even cause a change in skin color and unwanted hair growth — that’s going to look good in shorts.
Another side effect is bumps, tiny red ones around your mouth or small white or red ones on the rest of you. Yikes.
And it could take up to a week before some patients get the full benefit, which is how long I’m supposed to use it for. This is from www.webmd.com, a reliable source. I’m already regretting not just using the Ivy-Dry Super.
And even more, the cream is a banned substance for professional athletes, but that is definitely not a problem for me.
On to plan B, I decided to forego the shorts and get in to some of my over-the-knee-length capri pants until this ugly poison ivy is gone. I don’t want to risk spreading it more by shaving my legs. I could spot shave or even break out the long pants, but for now it’s the capris and I’m not looking down.