The Life and Times of Alann

So the week of 4-19 I was at an owner's house taking some paint off a chain link fence that I had accidentally over-sprayed on to it while painting some of the interior doors. Now mind you this house is in a subdivision and surrounded by a built environment and not out in some wooded area. There were several brushy, viney, planty growths on the fence that I took no mind of when I decided to wire brush the fence. Well I should have thought twice about my actions and attitude because the largest plant with no leaves turn out to be a large poison ivy vine. I spent at least an hour to an hour and a half working on the fence while in the mean time being touch and slapped in the face by the vine. Then I went home and worked the rest of the time on the fence posts for our chicken coop yard and as luck would have it decided not to wash my hands or shower all day except for at meals where I quickly washed my hands.

Saturday came around and I noticed my eye itched and I had a small itch on my arm but I didn't think much about it. Later Sat night I felt terrible, my throat felt swollen, I had the shivers, was dizzy, nauseous and just felt terrible. I called my parents to talk with them to see if they had any thoughts on what it could be since mom has some previous EMT training and both mom and dad have experience with blood sugar issues. After talking with them a while it was decided that I should eat an apple and go to bed to see if it was low blood sugar. When I woke up Sunday morning it was obvious that I had a larger case of poison ivy than I thought. My eye was swelling shut and areas with other rashes were starting to swell up as well. I skipped church and stayed home to soak in the tub and then nap which helped a little.

Once the family got home I went to Walgreen to get something for the itch, the pharmacists recommended I go to a family doctor to get a steroid shot. However we don't have a family doctor and didn't know of any place to go that wouldn't treat it as urgent care which costs us $100 instead of $30 on our insurance. Finally after some research I found a St Mercy's clinic in Washington MO that does both urgent and casual care visits at the same office. I went to the office and was given a steroid shot and a prescription for Prednisone to keep the ivy rash at bay. On the way home all the surface rashes went down and my eye unswelled and I got my prescription at Walgreen feeling pretty good. The rest of the day past uneventfully and at the end of the day I could see why I had such a bad night on Sat. Both my forearms, part of my biceps, some of my inner thigh and left side of my face were covered in red rashes where I should have been oozing out poison ivy gunk.

It has been over a week now since the incident and I am mostly better, a couple of days ago the Prednisone really started messing with me, I wasn't digesting well and I was starting to have anxiety and depression attacks at night. On Monday the 29th I decided to stop taking the Prednisone and I have felt better ever since. My throat still swells when I get real tired and am under hydrated but I am hoping that will pass in a few more days. Normally I recover from this in a month, but hopefully I will be fully functional again in a total of 2 or 3 weeks. Now I just have to wash everything and stay away from anything may looks remotely like poison ivy!