The Poison of Poison Ivy: PART 2

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It was sometime in the beginning of July when I started to scratch. I immediately followed protocol. I washed everything. I dressed the bumps with cortisone cream. I refused to itch, no matter how badly the urge. I washed it. I medicated it. I washed it. I diligently kept to a routine. I slept with my foot exposed. I kept it away from every other part of my body as best I could. But when you subconsciously cross your legs or sit on your knees ten times in a normal day, these habits are hard to break. While sitting at the computer I had absent mindedly pulled my feet up on the chair, butterfly-stretch style. Stupid.

My other foot broke out. I let this go on for over a week before breaking down at work. Not only was the itch driving me insane, but the job stress itself was wearing me paper thin. So, I went to urgent care. I promptly told the doctor that I have a history of not being able to get rid of poison ivy, and that I’m usually treated with a huge benedryl shot and a prescription cream. No problem. Done. I was feeling hopeful, positive, and sure that it would be cleared up in a few days’ time.

Nope.

It had spread up between my thighs (thanks to my butterfly-stretch sitting in short shorts). Both thighs. On each side, touching each other. Spots started to bloom behind my knee and up the back of my leg. The doctor I had seen had given me this pathetic prescription, a teeny tiny tube of the most mild steroid possible. It was gone in twenty four hours. I was in big trouble. Spending an entire weekend in and out of the bathroom to wash and dress my new poison spots and trying not to go completely mad from the itch, I knew I had to call in sick for Monday.
So. I went to urgent care again. Saw a different doctor that gave me a steroid shot and an enormous tube of prescription ointment that I could get refills on for the rest of the year. This was it. I was certain it was going to clear up this time. I went home and spent the rest of my sick day washing and medicating my spots diligently every two hours. To my great relief, the spots behind my knee and between my thighs cleared up within a few days. I was seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. In no time I’d be sleeping in my sheets again.

Wrong.

Now, meanwhile (be prepared to hear this word a lot through all of this – there’s a lot of meanwhiles in this story) I was preparing to go on a date for the upcoming weekend, one in which I was feeling extremely hopeful about. My dating hasn’t gone so well for the past four years. That’s just the way it is sometimes, especially when you’re my age and none of your friends are single. But this date… This was going to be a good one, I was sure of it.

The day of, I was struggling fiercely with my foot itching. It brought me to tears. I was seriously considering canceling on the guy, but I had already done that the weekend before and I couldn’t bare to do it again. Twice would’ve gotten me nowhere. So I bucked up and went. I was extremely glad I did. The date went better than I could’ve possibly expected. I was comfortable, confident, and cool with him, and that hasn’t happened for me in a very long time. The feeling felt mutual as he spoke of future outings. I was certain in my heart that this was going to at least be something promising.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t eaten a thing in over a week, and my nights consisted of waking up every hour on the hour having to wash and re-medicate all of my spots before crawling back under the single, pathetic blanket that would cover only the upper half of my body. I was sleep deprived. And my appetite was completely gone. Little did I know that the appetite part of the misery was due to another ailment, not the anxiety and stress of the poison ivy itch. This is where it begins to get graphic, Folks. You’ve been warned.

New itchy symptoms were rising in a place I really, really didn’t want them. The inflammation suddenly set fire, and I was certain that I was now battling a yeast infection. I suffered an entire day of work with it thinking I’d be okay if I just kept treating it with over the counter medicine. The following day was an all-day training day that I just couldn’t afford to miss out on. So I bought myself a box of Monistat and did what I needed to do that night. But the relief did not come. The burning I suffered after medicating was so atrocious that it brought me to tears (yet again) and I seriously considered driving myself to the emergency room. But no. I had to go to work the following day. “Mind over matter,” I said to myself. “Women suffer yeast infections all the time… you’re being a baby…”

So I suffered through it. The itching was beyond anything I’ve ever felt in my life. The burning and the pain was so unforgivable that I was seriously wishing for an organ transplant. I was glad I went to my training seminar because I needed the money, but suffering through it was an absolute nightmare. But I pulled up my toughie trousers and rolled up my sleeves and tried my absolute best not to let anyone know how much I was truly suffering. I remember thinking, “this has to be something worse than a yeast infection…this is number 9 pain on a pain scale.” I failed, of course. I could barely sit in the chair without wanting to cry.

Meanwhile, I was still treating the poison ivy on my feet.

Meanwhile, I was texting the guy I went out with, telling him that he has to wait until next week to go out with me due to “some health issues that I’m dealing with….”. He was very nice about it, and still seemed plenty interested. I’m assuming that when you say, “Go out next week” and he says “Perfect!” that he wants to go out with you again. I’m not misreading that, am I?

Meanwhile… My yeast infection was bringing me to tears. Again. I was certain I could take care of it myself, but things started to become worse. When my co-worker asked how I was feeling, I broke out into tears and made a mad dash for the bathroom to cry.

Through all of this, my stomach had been making strange sounds now and again, and I was having a very difficult time eating. My insides were gurgling and moving and feeling very unusual, the very sight of food made me want to vomit. A very strange rash was forming on my belly too that was baffling me. It wasn’t poison ivy. It was more itch that I was horrified to have to deal with, but it was definitely not poison ivy. My stomach continued to behave even more unusually. I figured that my IBS was inflamed from all the anxiety, so I didn’t think much of it until I had to rush to the bathroom. I went. And it went sort of strange. I looked in the toilet to find, to my absolute horror, two long tape worms. That was all I dispensed. Granted they were covered in you-know-what, but there was absolutely no mistake about what they were. Before saying anything to my mother, I flushed (which was stupid….), and decided to go online to see if there was any chance at all that I was mistaken about what I saw. This also, was stupid.

I highly recommend you not Google “internal parasites in humans”. The images alone are enough to make you want to vomit. To me, there’s nothing more revolting than parasitic worms which (in close-up pictures) have alien like mouths filled with pointy little teeth. Knowing these abominable demons were inside of me, my heart began to race and I began to sweat. I had found the description I needed. One of the symptoms was having a rash on your belly. The other, loss of appetite. I was doomed. This was my breaking point. I privately told my mother what was happening, and I broke out into a full fledged panic attack. I was hyperventilating and shaking and crying, and wanted desperately to go to the emergency room (again). She talked me down and convinced me to “go to urgent care tomorrow”. I took two of my anti-anxiety pills to tranquilize my horror (and pain and itching), and eventually came to a calm.

Doctor number three. A man. Of course it would be a man. Of course. First two doctors were women. I go in for a yeast infection and worms, and it’s a young, attractive man. Of course. He was very nice, though, and I did survive. He did a number of tests, and they all came back negative. “But it looks like a yeast infection so that’s how I’m going to treat it” he tells me. At last minute I gain the courage to tell him about the worms. He was very nice, again. He told me it’s more common than people think. People don’t exactly like to talk about it (except for self-absorbed writers who thrive off the attention of sharing gross stories). He wrote up a one-pill treatment for it that “will most definitely take care of it”.

‘Took my pill for the yeast infection as soon as I got home. Hours later I was feeling internal relief. ‘Took my wormy pill. ‘Had a few unpleasant bathroom moments, but soon was in perfect plumbing working order. My appetite came back full force. It was liberating. ‘Took my second pill for my yeast infection 24 hours later. Internally, so much better. But there was still a violent outer rash that just would not clear up…

Meanwhile, still treating the poison ivy on my feet.

Meanwhile, still texting that guy to try to keep him interested…but he wasn’t texting back…

Three and a half weeks since the poison on my foot began, I was at work. What I do for a living can be very stressful on the heartstrings, and can bully your wits enough as it is. I have plenty of challenges that are tiresome to overcome, and having to deal with violent rashes in nasty places and poison ivy on my feet, I was due for a finale melt down. After the ninetieth time of going to the bathroom to treat my private rash, I snapped emotionally. I came out of the bathroom to tell my boss that I needed the next day off so I could make an appointment to see my own doctor, but when I tried to tell her all of this I couldn’t speak. I began sobbing. I was hysterical.

I left work early. I came home and sobbed some more. I just wanted all of this to be over. This was going on four weeks of dealing with all of these things. Madness had set in.

Meanwhile. The guy I was desperately trying to keep interested, lost interest. He stopped texting me. I should’ve taken the hint at this point.

Meanwhile. I was losing it mentally.

I finally went in to see my primary, something I should’ve done from the get-go if I hadn’t needed immediate fixes. She took one look at my private rash and said, “That is NOT a yeast infection… that is ANGRY….” She looked up at me and said, “I’m pretty sure that’s poison ivy.”

Obvious, you say. I should’ve known. What else would it be?

I had also asked about the worms, because the other doctor never did explain how I could’ve gotten them. After some discussion, we pin pointed the most probable cause. I had put horse manure, from the pasture, into my garden. I then planted my garden with my bare hands. I must’ve absent mindedly touched my mouth while digging, and worm eggs made their way into my system. The idea of it sickened me, and I will now never put horse manure in my garden for the rest of my life. End of story.

She wrote up a far stronger prescription cream for my feet, and told me I could use the other prescription ointment on my private area, “but no longer than two weeks.” I thought to myself, “Two weeks! You expect this to last another two weeks!” I was certain that if I had to deal with this another two weeks I was going to be collected immediately by the loony bin.

I began piling on my new cream onto my feet. It worked for a few days, but then started to fail me. New spots were showing up smidgeons away from where old spots dried up. So I finally took both medications and concocted a bomb-effect on my feet. It worked. Finally! But it was so goopy that I had to be careful about how I slept. That, and overdose...

Meanwhile, I finally received a return text from my so-called promising date man. Paraphrasing, he said it wouldn’t work out. No reason. Nothing. It left me angry. It left me crushed because this was my one shining ray of hope, the light at the end of my dreadful health tunnel, the one thing that was going to be good when all of this stupid poison ivy went away.

Meanwhile, I’m checking my bank account and realizing that there is absolutely no way I’ll be making that trip to New York I had planned on taking this summer, thanks to all of my medical expenses. I was supposed to go to be with a loved one who’s going through a very difficult time. I was supposed to go so I could see two of my best friends, and one of those best friends’ daughter who is like a niece to me. I was supposed to go so I could get a break, have a vacation from the awful stress at work. I was supposed to go home to be home. But poison is as poison does.

Here is where I claim my right to be a little whiney, Reader.

It is now the end of August, and I am still dealing with the poison ivy on my feet. My private rash has dried up, thank goodness, and did not last as long as I feared it would. It was just under two weeks before it was completely gone. But that concoction of medication I used to dry up the mother-ship patch of poison ivy on my foot? ‘Gave me a chemical burn. And then on a very hot day, it sun-burned on top of it. And now I’m treating a second degree burn on my foot, on top of new spots that sprouted over night last night. I’m at the very end of my super-strong cream – as in, I’m two seconds away from cutting open the tube to get the very last microscopic measures of it.

I’m obsessively looking at my foot a hundred times a day, wondering which red area is a dried up patch or one that I have to medicate. But I can’t medicate it anymore… The skin damage on my foot is more atrocious than I’ve ever suffered before. I remember bruising, and scabs, and some skin peeling, I do. But not the burns. And now there’s dry, dead skin that itches and is making me unbelievably paranoid to itch it. I tried lotion before, but that just seemed to spread the poison.

Hmm. Allow me to change my mind.

I’ve decided not to whine.

I have a confession to make, Reader:

I’ve always considered myself a person who can adapt well to her surroundings, who can survive change. The truth is quite the opposite. I’ve learned to discipline myself into accepting change because I believe it’s healthy to, but deep down I don’t handle things well when my world is knocked into. When my schedule changes, I spook. When my routine is interrupted, I panic. When I’m out of my comfort zone, I have to throw back a pill just to handle it. I try to hide these things because they embarrass me. It makes me feel weak and fragile. But the truth of it is, when health issues interrupt my life and take away my regular schedule of things, my routine, and throw me into a very uncomfortable zone, mentally I start to loose it. Emotionally, I become turned into myself. I become angry. Depressed. And I’m unable to cope with it in a proper fashion.

I’m perfectly aware that the world has not come to an end. I’m perfectly aware that I’m not the only person in my personal community dealing with unpleasant complications in their life. I’m perfectly aware that all of this will eventually heal and come to an end. There is always healing. Even when you can’t possibly fathom it, you will always heal. You might come through with a scar, but hey. We all know that cliché, don’t we? Poison ivy ruined my summer. It did. But if this is the worst I have going for me, then I’ve got it pretty damn good. So, instead of whining to all of my readers, I want to make amends with you.

I am sorry that I don’t have it worse than you. If I could take on all of your pain, I would. If I could take on all of your grieving and agony, I would pile it into my heart to save you. You know who you are. You know I love you, and I am so sorry that you are hurting. All of you. I am sorry to all of you. Like I said before, my existence is wee, little, and meaningless. I can hold myself accountable for that truth. But you… You are everything that I live for. You are the purpose that keeps me going, and if I could return the favor I would. I’m trying to. This is my way of sharing in hopes that it does something more than getting tomatoes thrown at my head. Poison is as poison does, and I know you’ve had to deal with the worst of its kind, and if I could form the perfect antidote for it, I would. Some people use faith. I’ve heard good things about it. Have faith, Reader. Believe that all bad things run their cycle and come to an end eventually. Have faith. Find your purpose. And give what you can to those who need you.

My poison will dry up. And so will yours.