Poison Ivy

I can’t say that I should be blamed for this…I have lived 27 years and never in all of my hiking or climbing or riding, ever, had any sort of reaction to poison ivy. For those of you who are close to me, you know that these past two weeks have been a struggle with an unknown physical reaction, with other reactions following.
I finally went to my medical doctor. (who is one of the fastest doctors I have ever met for diagnosing a problem, and for prescribing medication) I explained my situation: about two weeks ago, I noticed a dry, itchy patch on the top of one of my toes. I was going to the dermatologist anyway, so I asked her what it was and she said it was just eczema, and gave me topical cortisone to treat it. I faithfully applied the cortisone for about three days, even though the patch spread below my toes, and across three of them, and looked sort of like leprosy.
Then I realized that it looked much better before I had put on the cortisone and stopped applying the cortisone. I had to wait through a very painful weekend before I could get back to the dermatologist. They said I probably had an allergic reaction to the cortisone (duh) and when it split open, I got bacterial infection. So, they put me on 2 types of medicine to clear it up. Well, 3 days later, I had itchy red bumps all over my wrists and feet and decided I was allergic to the medication. The dermatologists told me to restart the meds individually as soon as the rash cleared up, which sounded pretty stupid to me. My eye also started looking quite red, and swollen and itchy. (I normally accompany my blogs with photographs, but I will spare you this time)
So my doctor looks at me, totally ignoring all of my self-diagnoses, and says, have you been outside much, like in the garden or woods? At first I said no, but then, I thought about it and said yes, as a matter of fact- twice weeding. Once before that small patch appeared on my one toe, and once the day before all the rashes appeared on my wrists (right below my weeding gloves) and all over my feet, which were in flip-flops. So, she sort of smiled and said you have poison ivy. When I told her it couldn’t be poison ivy, she said, well than its poison oak.
So I left the doctors with a sore arm (from a steroid shot) and a much lighter heart, which lightened even more when Charles said I wasn’t allowed to weed any more.
(And there was much rejoicing. Yeah!)